For my birthday Neil got me a book called Mezze by Ghillie Başan, which is full of lovely recipes for small plate, sharing dishes from Turkey and the Middle East. There are loads of tasty looking recipes in there, but I chose this one to start with today, rustling some of these up for Neil and me for lunch. They are, effectively, falafel and are easy to do, although it’s not a quick recipe – the beans need to soak for 24 hours before use, so it’s not something you can decide to do on the spur of the moment.
This recipe serves 4-6, so, obviously, I scaled it down for just the two of us. Even going for slightly under half the suggested amount of beans I was still able to make a batch of 12 balls.
350g of large, skinless, dried broad beans, soaked in cold water for 24 hours
6 garlic cloves, crushed
1-2 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of ground cumin
2 teaspoons of ground coriander
1 teaspoon of chill powder
1 teaspoon of baking powder
A bunch of fresh, flat-lead parsley, finely chopped (reserve a little for garnishing)
A bunch of fresh, coriander, finely chopped (reserve a little for garnishing)
4 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped
Sunflower oil for frying
Lemon wedges to serve
Drain the beans and place them in a food processor and blend to a smooth, sofa paste. (this can take quite a while. With my food processor the mixture kept climbing up the bowl, so I had to keep on pushing it down and folding it over into itself so that it all got evenly blended.)
Add four of the crushed garlic cloves, along with the salt, cumin, ground coriander, chilli powder and baking powder, and continue to blend the paste.
Add the herbs and spring onions and give the whole mixture a final, brief whizz. Leave the mixture to stand for 1-2 hours, to allow the flavours to mingle.
Mould the mixture into small, tight balls and pop them on a plate.
Heat up enough oil for deep frying in a heavy-based saucepan and fry the balls, in batches, until golden brown. Drain them on kitchen paper.
Tip the falafel onto a serving dish and sprinkle the reserve parsley and coriander over them. Serve with wedge of lemon and maybe a dollop of yoghurt.
cookingwithneil 