Wednesday

Discovery of the day: Falafelicious!

I'd had this hankering for falafel ever since I saw the recipe in my Moosewood Cookbook a couple of weeks ago.

I decided to try cooking dried chickpeas to see if the texture would be different than canned. Got that done earlier in the week. I had to hang around the house yesterday morning to wait for the furnace guy so I took that opportunity to put together the "batter". Screw the "hand-mashing"; I used the food processor and it was done in nothing flat. I stuck the bowl in the fridge and came in to work, pleased that I A) knew what we were having for dinner that night and B) had already started it. Both are rare experiences for me.

Once I got to work, I started thinking that frying the falafel probably wouldn't aid me in reaching my goal, so I poked around on the Web and found a couple of recipes for baked falafel. 350 deg. for 20 mins? Sure, why not.

They came out... OK. Flavor was good but the texture was... eh. It couldn't have been too bad -- my son actually ate it (dipped in mayo) -- but dammit, I wanted the fried crunchy goodness. The tahini sauce I made rocked, though. And next time I'm using canned chickpeas. I can't see where the texture of the cooked dried beans was any different. And if there was a difference, it certainly wasn't worth the 3-4 hours it took me to cook them.

I scooped the rest of the falafel into little mounds and froze them on a cookie sheet. I'm going to throw them into a zip-top bag and keep them in the freezer until I'm ready to try again. And yes, next time they will be fried.

In other news, my solid 6 lb loss is holding. I'm fighting a headache and some... intestinal upset today. Hope that's a temporary aberration and not the sign of a virus to come!