Falafel vegetarian

Preparing the falafel – 15 minutes + waiting time

Soak the dried chickpeas in plenty of cold water. There are recipes which use canned chickpeas, but these tend to be very wet and harder to form into nice balls which don't fall apart during frying.

Drain the soaked chickpeas and leave them in the colander. This will help even more water to drain out of the chickpeas. Peel the garlic cloves and red onion, then cut them into chunks.

Remove the seeds from the red chilli and strip the coriander leaves from their stems. Put the chickpeas, garlic, onion, red chilli and coriander in the food processor and pulse until almost smooth (the mixture will never be completely smooth).

Put the mixture in a large bowl and add the spices, bicarbonate of soda, lemon zest and flour.  

Frying the falafel – 30 minutes

Heat the sunflower oil to a temperature of 180 degrees Celsius. Use your hands to roll small balls from the falafel dough. This will be a bit sticky; you can add some extra flour if necessary, but this will make the falafel drier.

Deep fry for 3 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve the falafel with a simple yoghurt sauce: just mix some sliced fresh garlic and lemon juice together with plain yoghurt and season with salt and pepper. Enjoy your meal!