Falafel MkII Block I (red)

[drcuriosity]

From Cooking

Ingredients:
1t Baking soda
1t Coriander
1t Cayenne pepper
1t Cumin and lemon spice mix
2t Smoked paprika
2t Paprika
3t Za'atar
3t Salt

Approx. 200-250g (dry) chickpeas, soaked
Some sundried tomato
0.5t minced garlic
Small bunch of parsley
7 slices white bread (5 slices toast cut), soaked and drained (well, put in warming drawer)

Method:

1. Blend chickpeas
   

   From Cooking

2. Add spices and blend in
   

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3. Add tomato, garlic, parsley and blend in
   

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4. Add bread and blend in
   

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5. Add salt to taste

End result:
They cook through faster and a bit darker than the previous variety, though that could be because I didn't refrigerate the mix first. The half-teaspoon of cayenne came out just right - enough bite to notice in the taste, but little in the way of lasting heat.

Commentary:

• If I were going to do it again, I might add another slice or two of bread to bind the patties together better without further drying of the mixture.
  
• Another alternative to try might be crumbing the outside before frying.
  
• More sundried tomato for next time, or possibly tomato pureed and rendered down in a saucepan and left somewhere to dry out a bit.
  
• Could use some lemon juice as per the original green ones, but probably only 1/4 of a lemon per 250g.

Comments

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you're vegan, but if not, a bit of beaten egg would bind them without drying them out. You could put some in the mix, and use the rest to crumb them?

[drcuriosity]

Quite definitely an omnivore. The egg's an interesting idea. I was thinking of just rolling what I had in breadcrumbs as-is, but dipping in flour then beaten egg first could be quite nice - like a falafel schnitzel, almost :-)

[aigantighe.livejournal.com]

Om nom nom..

What's the book on your bed in the first photo?

[drcuriosity]

This one:
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=BhDZX3z8WA8C
http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Attention-Michael-Jenkin/dp/0387950583

Was in Richard's office and saw it on the bookshelf. Opened it at a random page and found a chapter entitled Vision and Action in Virtual Environments: Modern Psychophysics in Spatial Cognition Research. I'll get through it and my other reading a lot faster once I have money for spectacles, though - my reading stamina is a bit limited otherwise.

[aigantighe.livejournal.com]

Cool..

Let me know how it is.. I'm churning my way through Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessmentby
the NRC Committee on the Foundations of Assessment (Pellegrino et al). It reads like a government document, but is really thorough.

Read How to Solve It not too long ago, too, which you would probably find interesting - it's from the 1940s, and addresses good heuristics for general problem solving. It's been really valuable for me..

Catch you online sometime..

[atropus.livejournal.com]

Adding bread, huh? I didn't realise that was a regular feature of that kind of recipe. It seems very similar to something I used to cook in my 1st year, only I called it Green Mush. In my version I didn't patty it, and the legume component was mostly green split peas ;-)

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I do declare your food processor to be larger than mine -- I had to do the blending part in two batches. After pureeing the chickpeas and mixing in the spices I transferred everything to a bowl and mixed with a spatula.

Oh, and I had no za'atar, so this is the result without (and with a boatload more garlic). And an egg instead of bread.

They came out really nicely, although next time I'll use a lighter hand on the smoked paprika, cayenne and salt. The recipe made enough for two dinners for the three of us.

[drcuriosity]

Happy to share :-)