Light and fluffy Syrian falafel

I’ve finally cracked it! Well, Amira from ‘Amira’s Pantry’ cracked it but after 12 years I’ve found her recipe so I’m counting this as a win! They are light, fluffy and packed with fresh herbs on the inside and crunchy on the outside. I have tried many different falafel recipes over the years but they tended to be heavy and dense.

Mum and I were lucky enough to visit Syria in 2008 and spent time in Damascus before travelling to Palmyra then on to Aleppo. I can't imagine what it is like to have your home turn into a civil war zone for over 10 years. Writing this post has given me a kick up the behind and I've started a monthly donation to Medicins San Frontieres

As well as the falafel the other food memories I took away were fat dates stuffed with a creamy filling (I think it was a plain cream cheese) and sprinkled with fresh ground cardamom powder, lamb patties with sour cherry sauce and S'fiha which are mini flat breads with a meat, pine nut and yogurt topping. The flat breads were turned out at a rate of knots from an open fronted hole in the wall bakery directly onto the street, I'll never forget one of the chefs was shaping and flinging dough whilst gripping a cigarette in his mouth and the ash pillar was getting longer and longer, he managed to balance it without it getting into the food!

Onto the falafel. I made half the volume that Amira did and as you can see from the photos I got 14 falafel. I’d also recommend making the Parkholme Supperclub tahini and garlic sauce to go with it. If you have a burst of energy a fattouch salad would be amazing with it too.

Making these has made me realise that I do need to buy a blender with higher revs, my poor little £25 Argos number struggled to blend the falafels as smoothly as Amira did. I would also LOVE to buy a falafel press that makes them doughnut shaped with a hole in the middle, but my kitchen drawers are groaning with the volume of kit I've bought and only used once (the som tam peeler springs to mind)

I deep fried this batch but I would like to try shallow frying them in a very small amount of oil and finishing them in the oven as this would be healthier, I’ll report back.

Amira’s Syrian Falafel

1 cup dry chickpeas

½ an onion diced

4 garlic cloves peeled and roughly chopped

1 small bunch parsley washed and dried with stalks removed

1 small bunch coriander washed and dried

1tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

Mix 1 egg, ½tsp salt and1tsp coriander powder (and use HALF of this mixture)

Oil for deep frying

Amira's video is great, it really helped me see what I was aiming for. I'd recommend watching it before you get started.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJHSMWRi7m0

Soak your chickpeas overnight, by the next day you can see that they’ve puffed up. If they don’t puff up it might be that your chickpeas are old (as my last packet was, I had to throw them out).

Drain and rinse the chickpeas. I let my sit in the colander for a while then I spread them on kitchen roll as I wanted to keep my mixture dry.I then blitzed the chickpeas in two batches in the food processor and moved the mixture into a separate bowl as they became ready.

Roughly chop the onion and garlic, rinse and dry the herbs and take any big stalks out.

Next I blitzed the onion and garlic together and added them to the bowl of ground chickpeas and finally blitzed the herbs. This did take me a while as my blender is pretty low power.

I then tipped the herbs into the bowl and mixed everything thoroughly and re-processed everything in batches to try and get the same green coloured fine texture as Amira did. It took a while, and involved alot of bowls as I'd reprocess one batch and put in new bowl, take more from the original bowl and reprocess - a labour of love! Add the bicarbonate of soda. You can freeze the mixture at this stage if you'd like.

Now mix the egg, coriander and salt and just use half of it. I used just over half the egg mixture and the falafel paste was very moist as I wanted it hold together. Now shape them into small flat patties, I sprinkled half mine with sesame seeds.

Put an inch of oil (I used rapeseed) into a frying pan and fry for a few minutes on each side turning regularly until they are golden brown.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/30bc23_fcb10d399bb845ef88cd45353a354157/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Carefully scoop them out onto a piece of kitchen roll to drain

I served mine with this tasty but simple tahini and garlic sauce recipe that I learnt at a Syrian cookery class at the Parkholme supper club. I would totally recommend this supper club as they give their profits to Médecins Sans Frontieres. The organiser also put me in touch with a food charity “Bags of Taste” who I now volunteer for, if you want to volunteer too click the link and sign up!

Tahini sauce:

2 x tbsp of tahini

2 x tbsp water

1 x tbsp lemon juice

½ clove garlic (or more if you like)

Salt

Use the salt to crush the garlic into a puree. Put the tahini into a small bowl (I use a mug) then add the water and lemon without mixing it as you want to do it all together, mix vigorously now, the mixture looks odd at first, kind of like it splitting but don’t worry, it will come together. When it has turned into a thickish paste add in the salty garlic. I love this tahini and it is the one that I use when I can get it.

Mix and taste – does it need more lemon, more garlic, more salt? If you prefer a thinner consistency add in a little more water. Drizzle over your falafel.