OK, I got my recipe from searching "vegan recipes" on Bing search engine (not that you can't do t he same thing with google, but I am saying what search engine I used so people can retrace my steps) and then I think searching by season, "Winter" and turning up "vegan falafel" as the first and easiest recipe that was inexpensive to make. I was cooking for my girlfriend, Linda, again and I needed to keep meat and dairy out of the recipe for health reasons, though she said we could slide on the bean protein even though she's really not supposed to have protein more than once a week. Basically, if your diet is so pure that you make yourself miserable then you're either not going to live that long for that reason or you're going to suddenly devour a pound of carnitas every day for a week and wash it down with...dare I say it?...Alcohol! anyway, it's really important to let yourself have a little of the things that you love no matter what the doctor tells you. This is coming from the guy who quit smoking recently after chaining them down for thirty years and having pneumonia and bronchitis...That's me. But let me try to find the recipe I used:
1 can chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1 package pita bread (about 6)
1 bulb garlic (all the garlic we could get)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup imitation sour cream (actually we cheated and used real sour cream. It was on sale.)
1 minced yellow onion
1/2 pint raita (we would have got more if we could. Also, raita is actually an Indian yogurt dressing and turned out to be slightly too jazzy for my tastes with this recipe.)
1 bunch fresh cilantro (Yes!)
black pepper
no salt
Anyway, I started by putting the onions on to fry and then really mashing the chickpeas as good as I could with a bean masher and then mashing in the other ingredients one by one (along with another 1/4 cup of olive oil the recipe calls for late in the mixing process) and what I found is (1) I didn't miss having a recipe in front of me, but I would have used one if I could have. (2) One of the reasons homemade and restaurant made will never taste the same is really good homemade always ends up misplacing the blender and not getting the beans perfectly mashed or the garlic properly distributed, but my funky homemade falafel ended up going to heaven while all the falafel in restaurants was only, well, angelic. But I don't recommend using my recipe to repeat my recipe. Rather I recommend searching "recipes by season" online and giving precedence to ones using ingredients you already have in the fridge. For one thing, falafel is meant to have lemon juice, mint instead of cilantro, and coriander, but I just had to McGiver it. Linda and I had no trouble finishing it all and I wish I could have some right now.
1 can chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1 package pita bread (about 6)
1 bulb garlic (all the garlic we could get)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup imitation sour cream (actually we cheated and used real sour cream. It was on sale.)
1 minced yellow onion
1/2 pint raita (we would have got more if we could. Also, raita is actually an Indian yogurt dressing and turned out to be slightly too jazzy for my tastes with this recipe.)
1 bunch fresh cilantro (Yes!)
black pepper
no salt
Anyway, I started by putting the onions on to fry and then really mashing the chickpeas as good as I could with a bean masher and then mashing in the other ingredients one by one (along with another 1/4 cup of olive oil the recipe calls for late in the mixing process) and what I found is (1) I didn't miss having a recipe in front of me, but I would have used one if I could have. (2) One of the reasons homemade and restaurant made will never taste the same is really good homemade always ends up misplacing the blender and not getting the beans perfectly mashed or the garlic properly distributed, but my funky homemade falafel ended up going to heaven while all the falafel in restaurants was only, well, angelic. But I don't recommend using my recipe to repeat my recipe. Rather I recommend searching "recipes by season" online and giving precedence to ones using ingredients you already have in the fridge. For one thing, falafel is meant to have lemon juice, mint instead of cilantro, and coriander, but I just had to McGiver it. Linda and I had no trouble finishing it all and I wish I could have some right now.
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