Falafel and Hummus (and Falafel Burgers)

There are probably as many recipes for falafel as there are people who have written them down, and not only are they all fabulous, they're all right. There's a stall on Cambridge market with some guys from Algeria who sell falafel made the way their families cooked it, and it's quite different to the falafel I ate in a backstreet cafe in Amman in Jordan. And that's different to the falafel I've had cooked by Lebanese and Israeli friends. Indeed, having a set recipe for falafel seems almost weird. 

Crazy mad falafel burger in a bun that'll need a damn good squashing to eat 

So I'm going to share my recipe here. Not because it's authentic (whatever that even means), or because  it's better than other falafel recipes (it probably isn't), but because it's easy, simple and always just works. Think of this as a 'basic' falafel from which you can make whatever other variants you like. I'll come on to talking about some of those variants below too.

As for hummus, I'll go so far as to say what I'm going to tell you here is heresy. But, again, this is a basic hummus and it's a way of making it that's great for the purpose to which I'm putting it, in a burger bun.

Falafel

You will need:

2 cups of dry chickpeas

1/2 an onion

4 garlic cloves

1 dessertspoon of ground cumin

Squeeze of lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Drizzle of olive oil

4 cloves of garlic

Oil for frying

Soak the chickpeas the night before. They do need a long soak, you want to put them on before bed to cook them the following evening.

Peel the onion and garlic and drop them into a food processor, and when they're finely chopped drop in the chickpeas, lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil and the cumin. Now whizz it up, to a fairly smooth consistency. You're not adding any other binder here, so you need it to be fine or it'll fall apart later. 

Now tip your mix out into a bowl, and warm up your deep fat fryer to 170C. If you haven't got one, add an inch of fat to the bottom of a heavy bottom pan and get it hot enough to fry. Form patties to whatever size you like, and drop them in to the fat, turning occasionally until they're evenly browned all over. Yes, you can make nice big ones and call them falafel burgers. 

Serve hot, with salad, maybe a salsa, pickles, hummus, anything you like really. And if you've got any extra you can bung it in the fridge and warm it up in the microwave for lunch tomorrow. Make extra, in fact, and save some for later.

Hummus

You will need:

250g of cooked chickpeas

2 tablespoons of tahini or chunky peanut butter*

Juice of 1 lemon

2 cloves of garlic

1 dessertspoon of cumin

3 tablespoons of olive oil 

Water to preference

Salt, pepper and paprika to taste

If you want to soak extra chickpeas and then either boil or pressure cook them until they're tender (that's my preferred approach - 12 minutes at full pressure) that's great, otherwise you can used tinned.

Slice up the garlic, drop it into the food processor with tahini, chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice and add the cumin. If you want this to be really stiff and ideal for use in a burger, use peanut butter instead of tahini (this is probably heresy but you're eating a falafel burger so quit whining).  

Now taste it. You'll need to add salt, pepper, cumin and I suggest some paprika. Do you want it to be runnier, more of a dipping sauce? Add water, or if you want to be trendy some of the juice from a tin of chickpeas. 

Tip it into a bowl you can cover tightly, and refrigerate until you need it. 

Variations

There are all sorts of ways of changing this dish up.

I like to add fresh coriander and parsley into my falafel sometimes, it gives the dish a really fresh, zesty taste. Another variant would be to grind it a little less so it's chunkier but then to add an egg to bind it together so you get a coarser falafel. I've even added beetroot to produce a really pink, brightly coloured and sweet falafel. Essentially if you can grind it in with the chickpeas you can make it.

Hummus comes in a gazillion varieties on deli counters these days, and they're all basically just hummus with something else ground in. Roasted garlic works well, roasted red peppers, roasted carrots or sweet potatoes, etc. Give it a go, it won't go wrong. If you've got some black eyed peas cooked as well as chick peas, they can go in, likewise you can use dried peas instead of chickpeas and it's fine. The bottom line is, it's an adaptable and simple method and you can make it any way you like.