Falafels were introduced to our Sims' diets in World Adventures, where they originated in Al Simhara, Egypt.
Athough they look similar to meatballs, falafels are a vegetarian dish, usually made of chick peas or fava beans. The patties are deep fried, and served in pitta pockets, with salad and sauce.
Originating in the MIddle East, falafels are popular around the world and are now a popular street food, bought from take aways or food trucks.
In Game Recipe
Falafel
Baked Falafel Recipe
Roasted Red Pepper & Garlic Falafel
Falafel Pie
Original picture: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/223711
In Game Recipe
Prep: 25min | Cook: 20 minutes
Skill level 5
Ingredients: Lettuce, Onion
Book required: Falafel, can only get it in Egypt
Falafel
Ingredients
- 2 cups dried chickpeas, picked through and rinsed
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 small onion, coarsely chopped
- 6 garlic cloves, smashed
- 1 tablespoon cumin seeds, toasted and ground
- 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, toasted and ground
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 2 handfuls fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves coarsely chopped
- 1 handful fresh cilantro, leaves coarsely chopped
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Vegetable oil, for frying
- 8 warm pita bread, store bought or homemade recipe follows
- Tahini Sauce, recipe follows
- Shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, chopped cucumbers
Directions
- Put the dried chickpeas in a large bowl and add cool water to cover by 2 inches. Soak the beans in the refrigerator for at least 18 hours or up to 24; the chickpeas will swell to triple their original size. Drain and rinse thoroughly.
- Put the soaked chickpeas in a food processor and pulse to coarsely grind, not until smooth but with no whole chickpeas remaining either. Add the baking powder, onion, garlic, spices, and herbs; process until the mixture is pureed; scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate while heating the oil, this should take about 15 minutes.
- Pour 3-inches of the oil in a deep fryer or deep heavy pot and heat to 375 degrees F.
- Roll the falafel mixture into ping-pong size balls. (Alternatively, use an ice cream scoop.) Carefully slip a few at a time into the hot oil, making sure they don't stick to the bottom. Fry until the chickpea fritters are a crusty dark brown on all sides, turning as needed, about 5 minutes per batch. Remove the falafels with a slotted spoon and drain on a platter lined with paper towels.
- Open the pita bread halves to make pockets (don't split all the way) and put 4 fried falafels into each. Drizzle with the tahini sauce and layer with lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Serve immediately.
Tahini Sauce:
- 1/2 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
- 1/2 cup plain yogurt or water
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- Pinch salt
- Pinch paprika
- Combine all the ingredients in a blender, process on high speed to make a smooth and creamy sauce. Adjust seasoning, to taste, and serve with falafels or as a salad dressing.
Source: http://www.foodnetwo…cipe/index.html
Baked Falafel RecipeIngredients
- 15 to 20 oz can chickpeas, drained OR 1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked for 24 hours and drained
- 1/2 onion
- 6 tablespoons of chopped parsley and/or cilantro (I'm doing about 2/3 parsley, 1/3 cilantro)
- 2-3 cloves garlic, depending on your taste
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 2 teaspoons coriander
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- pinch of cayenne
- couple tablespoons of olive oil – for the falafel and for the baking sheet!
- salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Turn the oven on to 400 F.
- Roughly chop the herbs, onions and garlic.
- I know most people are like "LOL WHY?" but my food processor hates big pieces. I bet yours does too. So be nice to it.
- Throw EVERYTHING in the food processor.
- You'll want to pulse it, scraping down the sides until everything is finely processed and combined, but not pureed. If you're having problems getting it to come together, add a tiny bit of olive oil to get it going.
- The mixture should be slightly wet and hold together well.
- Taste everything at this point and adjust seasonings as needed.
- I got 10 patties out of the mixture. I started with balls about two inches wide and then flattened them. I like having them flat because they're easier to eat in a pita and they cook better in the oven.
- You can do bigger or smaller, but you might want to adjust the cooking time. Just play around with it.
- After ten minutes, take them out and carefully flip them. They'll be starting to brown and should be pretty firm.
- Put them back in for fifteen minutes.Once I took them out, I flipped them so you guys can see how lovely and brown they get.
- The outsides should be crusty, and the insides should be nice and soft.
- Great with yogurt or sour cream, hummus (my recipe can be found here!), tahini sauce, guacamole, or tzatziki. I always put cucumber and red onion in mine. A little mint & tomato is good too.
Source: http://www.instructa…Falafel-Recipe/ (with pictures)
Roasted Red Pepper & Garlic Falafel
Ingredients
- 1 red pepper
- 1 entire bulb of garlic
- 4 cups cooked chickpeas
- 1 cup of finely minced onion
- 2 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp chickpea flour
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Directions
- Before doing anything else, roast that pepper and that garlic bulb!
- First, peel the outer layer of paper from the garlic bulb until the individual cloves can be seen, but are still connected. Chop off the pointy tops of the garlic bulbs and the bottom of the bulb so that garlic is exposed on both sides but all is still connected to the base…. then wrap loosely in foil.
- Once the red pepper was blackened on all sides, I removed both the garlic and pepper from the oven.
- Next I peeled the outer layers off of the garlic bulb and left just the yummy roasted cloves. Then I de-skinned/de-seeded the red pepper, chopped it up and set aside.
- Okay, so once you’ve done all that, the rest is easy:
- In food processor, combine roasted garlic cloves (I ended up with , canned chickpeas, minced onion, cumin, salt and baking powder. Pulse together until mixed, then scrape down sides. Repeat until all is combined into a thick hummus-like consistency. (You may need to add a touch of water to the mix to get it smooth enough).
- Transfer chickpea mixture into a large bowl and stir in chickpea flour… making sure to only mix it just enough to combine. Fold in parsley, cilantro and chopped red pepper.
- Chill mixture in freezer for a few minutes…or in the fridge if you have an extra hour or so. It needs to be chilled until workable. In the meantime, get your oil ready to go.
- I used a deep fryer to cook mine, but a nice deep pot of oil would work well too- since I’m not too good with giant pots of hot oil, I’ll keep the directions to what I did with the deep fryer.
- I heated my vegetable oil until it reached 360 °F. Once the oil was ready, I tested it by dropping a small amount of batter in the oil… once it rose to the top and started cooking I dropped in a tester falafel ball. This gave me a cooking time of about 8 minutes until perfect done-ness was achieved.
- I made about 5 falafels at a time, and I fashioned them each like a stout patty. Mine were about 2″ x 1″ patties. Use a little extra chickpea flour to shape them if you find them to be sticky, but try not to “coat†the patties in it or it may give it a weird texture.
- Cook falafel for about 8 minutes in your deep fryer. Transfer to absorbent paper bag/paper towel/ cloth and serve. Repeat the cooking process until all falafel batter has been used.
- Serve hot!
Source: http://goodmood-food…-garlic-falafel
Falafel Pie
Ingredients
- 1 cup dried chickpeas (or about 2 1/2 cups canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed)
- 1/2 large onion, roughly chopped (about 1 cup)
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon dried hot red pepper
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 4 – 6 tablespoons flour
- Vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup chopped tomato
- 1 large cucumber, sliced
- 1/2 cup Kalamata olives
- 3/4 cup Hummus
- Cucumber Sauce (see below for recipe)
Directions
- Put the chickpeas in a large bowl and add enough cold water to cover them by at least 2 inches. Let soak overnight, then drain. (Skip this step if using canned chickpeas)
- Heat oven to 375 degrees.
- Place the drained, uncooked chickpeas and the onion half in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the parsley, cilantro, salt, hot pepper, garlic, and cumin. Process until blended but not pureed. (Watch for over-processing with canned chickpeas)
- Sprinkle in the baking powder and 4 tablespoons of the flour, and pulse. You want to add enough flour so that the dough can form a small ball. Add extra flour if necessary.
- Liberally oil the bottom of 1 or 2 9" pie pans. (If you want an extra thick layer of falafel, use just a single pie pan. The pictures in this post show the thickness when divided among two pie pans.) Add the falafel mix into the pie pan(s) and pat it down until it is uniformly flat. Brush the top of the falafel with more oil. Bake just until the top appears dry and the falafel is firm to the touch, about 15-17 min if using 2 pie pans and 20-23 min if using one.
- Top falafel with hummus, cucumbers and tomatoes. Drizzle with cucumber sauce and sprinkle with chopped olives. Serve.
- Prep Time: 5 min (not including soaking) Cook Time: 20 min Serves: 6
Cucumber Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup plain yogurt
- 1/4 cucumber
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1/2 T lemon juice
- Salt and white pepper, to taste
- Pinch ground cayenne pepper
- Directions
- Grate cucumber with a box grater set over several layers of paper towels.
- Using the paper towels, squeeze out excess water from the cucumber.
- Add cucumber to the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl and mix well.
- Refrigerate if not using immediately.