Baked Falafel

I was reaaallly craving falafel. I was thinking of Taim's...or Mamoun's...or Maoz...

But, falafel has been on my "to cook list"...so I decided to try it out. I first asked my former colleague who is now in Israel if he had a great recipe. He did not. I asked another colleague of mine if she had a good falafel recipe. She said she did not. (He looked up...he did not see her. He looked down....he did not see her...who can identify this book?)

Chopping up those onions and garlic cloves...

Cumin! Coriander!

Our handy little faux food processor. It's not perfect, but it does a great job! Mwah!

Kitchenaid made this for NYC apartments! Because who has room for a stand mixer AND a food processor AND an espresso machine?

You can see here the chunky/coarse texture of the mixture

Ready to get baked!!

It's a miracle these lasted half way through the week...

I had a lot of cilantro and this yogurt was the perfect way to use it up

Tomatoes and red onions and cucumbers oh my!! My mom is going to ask, "how come you eat this but not koshumbri when I make it at home?". There is no answer to that. I don't know why. Sometimes I do, with lamb curry...but most of the time I don't.

OMFG! SO DELICIOUS! Some fresh toasted pita bread with my falafel and cilantro yogurt and romaine lettuce. BETTER.THAN.MAOZ!

Baked Falafel adapted from Ellie Krieger on Food Network

• 1 can of chickpeas
• 1/4 cup minced onion
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
• 1/4 cup cilantro leaves
• 2 tbsp. olive oil

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Combine all ingredients above, except for 1 tbsp. of olive oil. If you have a small faux food processor like mine, you'll have to do the following in batches. If you have a normal food processor, you can do it all at the same time. If you have neither, you could probably pulse this in a normal blender. Anyways. Process for as long as it takes to get it kind of chunky/coarse. Ellie's original recipe said 10 seconds. Mine was a little longer - maybe a couple of minutes per batch. Stop the motor and scrape the mixture down the sides of the bowl and continue to pulse until it looks like the coarse mixture above.

Form the mixture into 16 falafel balls. Place on a cookie sheet (also shown above) and bake for 20 minutes. Flip the falafel balls over and bake for another 20 minutes. These treats will be hard to resist!

While the falafels are baking away, you can make the cilantro yogurt sauce, which was loosely adapted from epicurious.com

• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro (AHHH YUMMM!)
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 5 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1/4 cup cucumber, diced
• 1 tomato, diced

Mix the first 4 ingredients together. Once it is pretty well blended, mix in the remaining ingredients.

Once you have everything done and your falafels are cooled, you can toast some pita bread and stuff it with romaine. Put in a couple of falafels and top with the yogurt sauce. Maybe throw in some sprouts on top too.

Oh man, this was SO tasty with the freshly toasted pita bread and topped with my yogurt sauce. Best lunch ever!!