Falafel - Vadai of the Middle East

I love falafel.  It makes for a delicious sandwich.  While travelling around Europe on holidays, I can't begin to count the numerous times the trusty kebab men with their kebabs and falafel served in warm pita bread offered a cheap and satisfactory solution to my hunger pangs. I can't think why I never attempted to make it till Ultraman suggested it recently.  I used to think stuff like this would require the skills of a Michelin star chef to make, but surprise, surprise!  It does take a bit of time if you are using dried chickpeas instead of the canned ones coz you have to soak them overnight and boil them for an hour or so.  But anyone with some passion for food would be able to carry out the relatively simple steps to cook falafel.  Google pointed the way to some pretty easy recipes and I ended up with some pretty decent Middle Eastern vadai.....

It starts with the chickpeas soaked overnight, boiled then drained....

Then comes the chopping...garlic, onions, parsley....

Then some arm muscle is required to mash all the stuff up together with the seasoning....of course, you can use a blender too.  I hate operating the blender that I have coz it never seems to blend everything evenly.  So, what I did was to put the chickpeas in a clean plastic bag and hammered away with my rolling pin....Not very refined, but it works well enough!

Here comes the not-so-healthy part, frying... apparently, you could bake them too but I am the type who indulges in hokkien mee, so frying it was....

Drain on paper towels to get rid of excess oil....All fried up and beautifully brown...Really look like vadai don't they??

Assembling the sandwich....I got some Lebanese bread instead of pita coz I didn't quite like the pita sold at the supermarket (too thick and doughy).  Lettuce, tomatoes and a good dollop of mayonnaise completed the ensemble.  I considered making some tahini - which is a sesame paste - which was used to serve the falafel.  But I thought that would be too much work as I was really looking forward to biting into the sandwich already....

Yummy, yummy, humongous bites out of a humongous roll....Ultraman, being the sly fox that he was, managed to appear just in time for a freshly made falafel sandwich.  Guess it does do the ego good to have someone other than your own self waxing lyrical about how good the falafel was :-p

Try to serve it freshly cooked while the falafel still has a nice crunchy exterior and soft moist center.  If you leave it out too long, the whole patty becomes a bit soft.  My Mum who only tried the patty several hours later said it was too soft for her liking and declared that it was "mm hoe sik" (Cantonese, translated as "No good").  Sigh, can't win them all.....

For the recipe, check out this link.... http://mideastfood.about.com/od/maindishes/r/falafelrecipe.htm