falafel

A while ago, I noticed How to Cook Everything has a falafel recipe. As I have dried chickpeas, and tahini, and love falafel, I decided to try it out! Here is how it went (I made half this recipe)

Ingredients:
1.75 cups dried chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion
1 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp cumin
~ 1 tsp cayenne
1 cup parsley or cilantro
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 baking soda
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Lots o' oil.

Blended chickpea mash.

Step 1. Soak the beans in a big bowl, covered by a few inches of water, for 24 hours.
2. WILL IT BLEND?
At this point the instructions tell you to put everything (except the oil) into your food processor. I do not have such a thing, and they cost more than I have. I do, however, have an aging blender; so I tried that. Here is the problem: blenders have sort of conical bowls, which is great for liquids but for solids means only the bottom stuff really gets chopped and the top stays kind of whole. if I'd thought about it, I could have done it in batches, but I didn't think to. So I ended up with a bunch of semi-processed chickpea stuff, and had to add extra water to it to blend it up. The results of this step do not really look delicious.

Frying is exciting.

3. Fryin'. I have never really fried something before, so this was exciting. You are instructed to put 2 inches of oil into a saucepan. THIS IS SO MUCH OIL. I did one inch, and that was a lot. Then, you are supposed to make little spheres from your mash. This also did not work well; in the end, I mostly got fried chickpea-matter, occasionally in coagulated lumps. (You toss them in the hot oil, and remove when brown). Then, you eat!

Food.

My evaluation is that this is a pretty time-consuming process, especially with having to poke around the chickpeas in the blender and then having to fry the non-balls three by three. I would probably not do this again soon, or at least not without a food processor. That said, the results are delicious, even if they are not as pretty as at a restaurant; there is something about things you fried freshly yourself that is hard to achieve in any other way. They were crispy and flavourful (though I would probably doctor the spices a bit on second go-round) and really rather delicious.

Scallion pancake-lettes

Sorry, guys, I'm on a roll.  I swear I'll stop soon (though I owe you my variations of the Hong Kong pork chop fried rice and Cantonese tomato beef rice recipes; future plans are for dan dan mian and tzar jang mian).  If you ever crave scallion pancakes but are tight on time, here's a quick fix.

Scallion pancake-lettes
Flour
Water
Scallions (frozen or fresh are fine)
Egg (optional)
Salt as needed (some prefer unsalted)
Mix them all and fry them up.

But wait!

Real scallion pancakes require special rolling techniques and whatnot and are time consuming and not easy to get right.  This recipe is a lot easier.  The hard part about this recipe is getting the proportions of flour and water right.  So here's the key: Take a chopstick and dip it into the mix.  If the mix drips off from the chopstick in solid droplets (i.e. not sluggishly dripping down or racing down like water), your mix is right.


As an aside, I've also made sweet versions of this--instead of adding salt and scallions, I add in honey or mashed bananas/apples.

2 simple and easy snacks

Since I usually just cook for myself, I tend towards cooking simply--I try not to spend more than 30 minutes cooking and cleaning, which I realize probably isn't what all of you have in mind.  Here are two quick snacks that are good for any time of the day which I made for myself recently.

French Cheese Toast: It's a combination of French toast and the grilled cheese sandwich.  Take stale bread, pop in some cheese in between a few of the pieces (hence, it's easier if the bread's in small pieces, so the cheese will stay in), place the sandwiches into beaten eggs, and fry them up.

Pears, brie, walnuts: Well, it's kind of obvious what this is :)  Had it with a glass of white.  Best if you toast the pears, brie and walnuts; if you don't have a toaster, use a microwave.