What’s your favorite way to enjoy a falafel? I love them in warm pita sandwiches with a light cucumber sauce, pickled onions and tomato salad. You can enjoy it alongside other plates or as part of a mezze spread. The secret ingredients are the fresh herbs.

Falafel is a popular Middle Eastern “fast food” made of a mixture of chickpeas, fresh herbs, and spices that are formed into a small patties or balls. It’s thought that falafel originated in Egypt as when Christians looked for a hearty replacement for meat during long seasons of fasting or lent. It has also become a popular vegan food in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. So maybe it was a good dish to have this weekend on the first day of spring, with Easter just around the corner.

Mom didn’t seem very excited about making these this weekend. But I’m not sure if it was because she was concerned about how much of a mess we make in her kitchen or whether or not she’d like them. Saturday morning she went shopping to buy produce, hummus, and other ingredients. She stopped by the Armenian bakery, and ended up having a wonderful conversation with a person about our falafel’s. They strongly recommended that we fry them instead of bake them. And she even bought a mix for the next time we make them. That means if we make them ever again.

Falafels alone are just not enough, so we needed to make a cucumber dill sauce and pickled onions. The recipes tells you it only takes five minutes to make, but that’s a lie. Takes more to just a grate cucumbers and let the vinegar sugar mixture to cool. 

The easiest part about making the actual falafel balls, is everything goes into a food processor, so you don’t have to do much, that is if your food processor works properly and the owners know how to work it. Yes we use it that infrequently that mom had to pull out the manual. I wish I had a picture of us having to pick up the whole contraption to dump out the mixture. We couldn’t separate the base from the container. But we got it to work, and we’re able to take it apart to clean it. Which in many ways was considered a huge success.

Once the mixture is blended, you need to let it sit in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour. Which slows things down a bit. Then you can form it into balls. Which sounds easier than it actually is. The texture is important because it can’t be too wet or too dry. Which since we’ve never made them before, we weren’t really sure what was considered too wet or too dry. Mom tried putting some olive oil on her hands and that seemed to work better, she made what I considered to be monster balls.

Based on the advice of our new an Armenian friend, we decided to fry them in what I would consider to be a gallon of oil. The plan was to pan fry them in a little oil. But no Ginger decided more was needed. When we attempted to fry our first ball, the oil wasn’t hot enough but the entire thing broke apart. So instead of messing around with it, we decided to bake them instead. Now Ginger has to find a place to dispose of a gallon of oil. They baked in the oven for about 30 minutes, I had a nice texture. I would bake them again.

Next was the assembly. We had fresh pita bread, added hummus falafel balls, cucumber dill sauce, cilantro and pickled onions. We had tomatoes but after messing the entire kitchen up we decided not to even have to clean another knife. While the pita bread was delicious it was a little thin, so things fell apart quickly. It was tasty, the textures of each of the pieces added to the entire deliciousness of the dish.

Would I make this again? Maybe, but if I could find a falafel restaurant nearby and buy them instead, I might do that next time.