RECIPE - Gluten Free Falafel

Hummus on the top, tahini sauce on the bottom. Fancy presentation, eh?

I've always been afraid to make falafel at home. All those flours, all those spices, the green specks in the mix. It's just too much.

But then we discovered Sahadi's in Downtown Brooklyn. This is one of the coolest markets I've been to in NYC. The idea is simple, it's just a gourmet Middle Eastern market, but it's really so much more. For one, the deli section serves fresh hummus, babaganoush, and yogurt. Then, there's a "take a number"section for service on all kinds of nuts, dried fruits, olives, tea, and coffee. There's also a pretty nice spice section. My favorite part was waiting for some nuts and dried fruits. The servers are so quick, they scoop, weigh, and toss your goodies into your basket faster than I can spell babaganoush.

The reason we went to Sahadi's was to try their house brand falafel mix. And after checking the ingredients, we found out it was gluten free!! We picked up some fresh hummus, tahini, and some cinnamon almonds (side note: TRY THESE!!), and we were good to go.

Now, making the falafel was a bit of a process. I still don't totally get what went wrong. So you just mix equal parts mix and water, let sit for half an hour, form into balls, and fry. The first two steps went well, but after half an hour the mix was still too wet to form into balls. I tried a test falafel, and it just disintegrated in the oil. After some more experimenting and adding some more mix, we found a pretty good texture. The result: awesome.

The tahini sauce was also way trickier than I expected. And it involved a bit of witchcraft. Let me explain. The recipe for the tahini sauce called for tahini (ground sesame), lemon juice, water, garlic, and salt. When I first saw the tahini it was really soupy. Even after I stirred it up (much like real peanut butter, you have to stir the liquid on top into the more dense stuff on bottom) I was concerned that adding  water would make it too soupy.

I went forward, and added some water, the garlic, and the lemon. And then I started to stir. Here's where the witchcraft comes in. The sauce got THICKER. It went from a soup into a paste. I tried adding some more water to thin it out, but no, it got even worse! I'm not quite sure what happened. So I added about a gallon of lemon juice, and it finally thinned out into a hummus-like consistency sauce. It tasted pretty good, so I guess it all worked out in the end.

Here's a good blog post I found on tahini, from the blog "Health on the Run".

And the final component to this falafel feast: hummus. This was perfect. I've never had better. One lady in the store says she comes from Manhattan every week for the stuff. That's devotion.

All in all, I think out Middle Eastern Falafel Fest was a success. I'm looking forward to trying it again, I'd like to try to make some pickled vegetables or a salad to go along with the falafel. Maybe even some gluten free pita bread??