Baked Falafel

I have never eaten falafel let alone made it before.  I honestly didn’t even know what it was when I heard of it until I looked it up online.  It is a middle-eastern dish.  Foodie Nick recommended falafel at one of his favorites places in NYC in my interview with him.  The version he loves isn’t the healthiest version, it’s more so the cheat day kind, when calories just don’t matter.  Most falafel is deep fried so that is why it’s more of a fatty dish usually, but I researched and found a lot of healthier baked recipes.  I picked out the one the best suited the amount of time I had to cook and the flavors I wanted.  This recipe doesn’t take too long and it was a great dinner.  After seeing the ingredients I was a little skeptical of how it would come out, but not only was it healthy, it also had tons of flavor and was so delicious!  Instead of patties you could make them in to small balls and this would be a nice appetizer dish instead of a meal.  There are so many different ways you could eat this.  A lot of what I saw was in sandwich pitas with lettuce and some sort of dressing.  I used what I had and had it over some arugula and sprinkled a little bit of ranch dressing on it.

Try something new! ENJOY!

The recipe calls for:

1/4 cup onion, chopped

1 can (15 oz) garbanzo beans, drained & rinsed

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tbls flour

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp olive oil

-- Squeeze the chopped onion in a paper towel to get out the water and put it aside,

-- Add the beans, parsley, garlic, cumin, coriander, salt and baking soda in a food processor. (I used a food chopper though.)  Process the ingredients until it is coarsely pureed.

-- Mix the onions and bean mixture together in a bowl.  Stir in the flour and egg to the bowl.  Shape the mixture into four patties and let them sit for 15 minutes.

-- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

-- Add the olive oil to a large pan.  Once the patties sat for 15 minutes add them to the pan and cook them on each side for about 3 minutes.

-- Place the patties on a baking pan (sprayed with a little oil) and transfer them into the oven for about 8 minutes or until they are heated through.