Tanti Auguri a Te

How fitting: my Italian roommate’s favorite dessert if Tiramisu. I have to admit that I don’t love apple pie. I don’t even like it that much. So I’m not as ‘American as apple pie,’ I’d have to say. But my roommate, he’d be as ‘Italian as tiramisu’ if that were a saying. It was his birthday this month so naturally, I put myself to making some tiramisu.

I’ve made it once before, but it was years ago and I don’t remember where I got the recipe, so I looked at my standby, epicurious.com and found a traditional, simple recipe. My one concern was the marsala wine: sure you could find it here, but there are so many substitutions (I found out online), one of them being sherry. So, as I’m in the land of sherry, it wasn’t a hard decision to throw in some Pedro Ximenez.

Being in the land of sherry (Spain) this also means that I’m in the land without my appliances, so the whipping of the egg whites had to be done by hand (yall should see my arm now), as did the whipping of the cream. The latter was a bit harder. I had already spent about 15 minutes (including breaks) whipping the egg whites to stiff-ish peaks, so I was getting sore. I poured the cream into a metal pan and began to whisk and after about 10 minutes not much was happening except lots of little bubbles, but no thickening really. Then I looked at the box and realized I was using light cream (of course it didn’t say it on the front, where one might think to put it), labeled on the side as 18% fat. So then I gave up and poured some of the cream in, not all though, because it was still mostly liquid. So, my words of advice before making this: get full-fat, heavy whipping cream, and get egg-beaters. Oh my poor KitchenAid mixer back home, missing me…

Tiramisu, alle Spagnolo

3 eggs
¾ c sugar
1 c mascarpone
½ c cream
2 c coffee
2 Tbsp sweet sherry (like Pedro Ximenez)
a bag of ladyfingers
cocoa powder

First I got the coffee mixture ready, and since I’m not a coffee drinker I used instant powder, two bags for two cups boiling water. Then I added the sherry, stirred and let sit. Next, I separated the eggs and over very low heat on the stove, mixed the egg yolks with all but a tablespoon or two of the sugar, whisking the whole time so they don’t cook and stick to the bottom of the pan. After about 2 or 3 minutes, they’re done so take off the heat, and mix in the mascarpone. Now comes the whippin’ time. Use your electric mixer or your muscles and beat the egg whites until soft peaks, and then add the remaining sugar and beat until stiff peaks and fold into the mascarpone mixture. Then whip your cream and fold that in as well. Now you’re ready to assemble. First, get yourself a clear glass container, so you can see the layers when you’re done. Dip each ladyfinger in the coffee just to get each bit wet, but not soaking (although some of mine ended up soaking, this could have been a cause of the excess liquid when I served it…) and lay side by side in the bottom of the dish. Then spread with a layer of the mascarpone cream and sift some cocoa powder on top to give a thin layer over the cheese. Now you just have to repeat everything. Dip ladyfingers, lay side by side again, cover with mascarpone, and then again with cocoa powder. I got three layers out of mine, but it depends how big your dish is. Then stick in the fridge until you eat it. Important: make sure you make this plenty of time ahead of serving it. Some reviews on epicurious said it tasted better the second and third days, but I only had time to do mine the morning of. So at least six hours before so that it has time to firm up in the fridge.
All in all, I was happy with it, as I think were the Italian guests, but I think that cream gave me the shaft, or else it was my excessive dipping of ladyfingers, because the bottom layer was especially liquidy, but it was eaten all the same.

Mexican in Spain

I’m going home in three weeks and besides seeing my family and my friends, there’s someone else I’m really looking forward to seeing: queso. Oh, my dear friend, he’s stood by me for so long, whenever I wanted, he was there, tasty as ever and he got along great with both chips and tortillas. He was always there for me, that is, until I moved to Spain and he stayed in Texas.

Queso doesn’t exist here because yellow cheese is hard to come by. They have so many great cheeses here, but they’re all white. No yellow cheese that’ll melt into a lovely puddle mixed with garlic, peppers, tomatoes, and onions. I did happen to find its cousin however, queso fundido. This is a lot easier to re-create, as it’s just white cheese melted to perfection in the oven and eaten with corn tortillas. I like to eat mine with a bit of chorizo, sometimes called choriqueso, which after regular queso, I tend to order a lot when I’m out in Austin.
The good thing about this is you don’t have to have a specific kind of cheese, just some good, white, melting cheese. I went to the deli counter at the store and asked what a good cheese would be to melt and they gave me some Danish or Dutch stuff, I can’t remember.

So with a bit of chorizo, corn tortillas, cilantro and a squirt of lime, I almost felt right at home.



Queso Fundido with Chorizo

a good helping of white melting cheese (depends on how many people you have)
about the same amount of cooking chorizo (not the already cured/cooked stuff)
plenty of corn tortillas
a handful of cilantro
a lime

It might be one of the easiest recipes ever, and it doesn’t have to be exact, as you can tell from the measurements above. It depends on how much you want to eat, and how much you like each ingredient. So first of all, preheat the oven to something pretty hot, around 400 F or 210 C and put the cheese in an oven proof dish (a lot of times it’s served in a heavy iron pan, but I didn’t have any oven-safe ones), and into the oven. To know when it’s finished, you just have to watch it until it’s bubbling and maybe a tiny bit brown around the edges. While the cheese is cooking, start the chorizo. If it’s in casings, as mine were, get all the meat out of it and put in a pan over medium heat on the stove. As it cooks it’ll start popping, releasing lots of grease and changing color. When it’s finished, it’ll be firmer. In the meantime, chop the cilantro roughly and heat your tortillas either in the microwave or in the oven with the cheese. And that’s pretty much it. You wait for everything to be cooked and hot and then you assemble: take a tortilla in hand, and spoon on some cheese (you know you’ve got the right cheese if it’s super stringy and starts getting more so as it cools). Then add some chorizo, a sprinkling of cilantro and a tiny squirt of lime juice. Roll up and don’t drip grease on yourself.

Málaga and Sevilla

Shame on me. I've been very bad and neglectful of my restaurant reviews. I went to Sevilla and Málaga this summer. Yup, about a half a year ago, and took many pictures (of food, of course), and I went to Berlin in August and still haven't posted any of those, oh right, and there's some other city where I seem to eat a lot in...Barcelona. And of course there was Rome this month…So now, I'm going to attempt to get back on track, and this will include being up to date with my recipes too, as I've just had a Thanksgiving dinner at mine and don’t want to be posting about it in February. I’ll start with a quick montage of Sevilla and Málaga, and do other trips, and when I get to Barcelona the reviews will be more detailed.

Ahhh Southern Spain. I don’t think there’s anything I can say about it that hasn’t been said. It’s warm, loud, and fried. I lived in Málaga for a semester a few years ago, and I told my señora that I was a vegetarian (at first, then I succumbed) because I was afraid of Spanish meat. Afraid of things being served with the heads, feet, and tails still on. Afraid of ham legs hanging from ceilings of every restaurant and bar. Afraid of eating an entire fish (be it a tiny fish), bones and eyes and all. I’ve given in to the ham legs now and I do have to say I am a fan of jamón Serrano. It’s too bad I avoided Spanish food at all costs those few months in Málaga because they have some good stuff, and on my trip there this summer, I went to a wonderful restaurant I had never even noticed before.

We passed it walking down the street on the way to our hotel and Dan immediately stopped and took a look in at La Campana. After dropping our things off, we returned immediately. This place was more of a bar, standing room and a few bar stools around about 3 tables only, and it was all seafood and fish on the menu, except for the eggplant. The menu was just a list posted on the wall, something along the lines of: shrimp, whitefish, dogfish, etc. So we got some fish, some eggplant (good to have a veg in there) and these fritters called tortitas de camarones. I didn’t expect everything to come fried, including the eggplant. Silly me. But lucky me. They were eggplant French fries and they were delicious. Everything was good…even the tortitas which were made with popcorn shrimp—they were tiny, and, as Spain does, they were whole. They throw them into the fritter batter with legs, eyes, antennas and all. So it took me a few bites before I inspected closer and saw antennas sticking out, and little pairs of black eyes. I know, it sounds gross, but if you don’t look at it, they go down quiet nicely. The eggplant fries were so good, we went back the next day for a plate of them before going to my señora’s house for lunch.

For dinner that night, I took Dan to one of my old haunts, Lechuga in the Plaza Merced. Lechuga is not typical Málaga food, which is a nice break from the grease. We split a salad that was full of endive, cheese, yogurty-stuff, dates, and some sweet-red berry sauce. I remembered the salads from this place: they’re huge and have a nice range of ingredients on the already impressive salad menu. Most Spanish salads include mayonnaise and/or potatoes in some form, and when I think salad, I think greens, and so does Lechuga. Now if you go to Málaga, you might not want to go somewhere for a baked potato, but if you’re there for an extended time and missing them, you must go for patatas asadas at Las Papas stand by the Picasso museum. It comes with a variety of toppings, most of them atypical, but some ofthem good. I go for butter, cheese and corn.

Now the last touch in Málaga: the hot chocolate at Café del Viajero. This is actually not Spanish chocolate, which is thicker than American. This is the same consistency as regular ole American stuff, but they have all different infusions with the hot chocolate, like mint, orange, licorice, cinnamon, rum, and the list goes on. And it’s a whole pot of it, not just a cup-full. Love this place. I can never decide between cinnamon or mint or orange, so in two days in the middle of summer in southern Spain, I made two trips for hot chocolate.

In Sevilla, I was introduced to a couple new things. I had been before, but as part of school group trips, or with family, so choices were sometimes limited or already decided. The first thing: they serve short, stubby, crunchy breadsticks with everything. Dan and his brother affectionately refer to them as ‘dog biscuits.’ Second thing: there’s something similar to, but better than gazpacho and it’s called salmorejo. I don’t love gazpacho, I guess I’m getting used to it, but isn’t it just pureed tomatoes served cold? Well, salmorejo is cold too, but I guess this kinda stuff is necessary in Sevilla summers (none of the buildings there are taller than two or three stories, and with the sun burning down all day, it’s a great sight to see people walking down the streets in single file, hugging the sides of the building for any sort of shade). But salmorejo is thicker than gazpacho, made also with bread, so I find it more of a soup than just pulverized tomatoes, and it always comes served with jamón, because don’t forget, we’re in Spain. I also had my first ajo blanco (garlic and almond soup, also served cold), with a few grapes dropped on and it was quite tasty. This was at a place called Bar Europa which was more than your average bar, and frankly it reminded me of a place you could find in San Sebastian. It was still tapas style because the portions were small, but it wasn’t a plate of a mayonnaise-drenched salad or deep-fried something. It was like fancy tapas. We started talking to the bartender and apparently the owner was from Barcelona, and they were really friendly there. That’s another thing that’s different between north and south: I’m still waiting to strike up a conversation with a friendly bartender, waiter, shopkeeper here. I’d say at Bar Europa it was some of the best eating in Sevilla for a reasonable price. After the soups, we got more. A little snack turned into a big snack, and we had some meat and some fish. Everything was presented with fitting complements, like the grapes, or walnuts and sauce, and rather fashionably served(admittedly, I don’t think ‘fashion’ when I think of Sevilla, and I was later proved correct after seeing some of the clothing choices of the locals). We had in addition to salmorejo and ajo blanco: Quesadilla “los Balanchares” gratinada sobre manzana Granny Smith (Grilled Balanchares cheese served over Granny Smith Apple slices), Lomo de novillo Argentino con patel de patata y hongos (Argentinian beef with a potato and mushroom pastry), Cabeza de lomo mechada (fatty pork loin), and Lomo de Lubina sobre pure de batata (grilled sea bass served on sweet potato puree).

Unfortunately, I didn’t take my camera out to all the meals in Sevilla, which is a shame because we went to one place that was quasi-Mexican (I’ll let them say that, but unless you’re in Texas or Mexico, you don’t get very close to good, true, Mexican food). We had something there that was a Roquefort cake, and it was like a layered cake with Roquefort and some sort of sauce and was strangely sweet and savory at the same time. I do have a picture of one place we just stopped in quickly because they had these “tablas de queso” or plates of melted cheese on bread and you could get different toppings, so I had to go for the pesto. Cheese, pesto and bread, no question. I wouldn’t have expected this from Sevilla in a regular bar, but Andalucía was surprising in that manner. I could get my good ole deep fried everything, along with some cold soups and a cold drink (tinto de verano, or red wine with Fanta limon was my choice), alongside more refined and upscale food, or something that was just a bit out of the ordinary.

Vanilla Bean and Crème de Violette Cheesecake

I realize, cheesecake is nothing new to me, and you've seen a few pictures of my variations, but I'm going to have to come out and say it, you're about to see a lot more with this one. It's just sooo good looking, I can't help it. I took pictures from every angle, in all lighting, just to figure out which would come out best, and honestly I love them all. I'm like a proud parent of my little 9 inch, Vanilla Bean and Crème de Violette Cheesecake.
That top layer of Crème de Violette gave a brilliant, light blue color, and reminded me of Easter pastels or baby booties. And my favorite thing about using vanilla beans is seeing the little tiny seeds, a sign of authenticity. Not to say I don't swoon at the smell of a good vanilla extract. The combination of a thin layer of shiny blue and bean-specked cheese, against a buttery golden crust was a sight.
Enough about how it looks. How does it taste? I'm not gonna lie, it was good. Real good. So good Dan thinks it might've knocked my first, classic, reigning winner, plain Cheesecake out of the top position. So that's to say that the Vanilla Bean Cheesecake is up there. I think another key to getting a perfectly smooth textured cheesecake is taking it out about 5-10 minutes underdone. It will harden a bit in the fridge, but be just on the verge of melting if you take it out at the right time.
I only had one vanilla bean available (I've since taken care of that and ordered a whole pound, thanks to Traveler's Lunchbox), so I would've liked to see more seeds, but with a vanilla bean and extract the flavor was right on. I knew I wanted to do a vanilla cheesecake, and the top layer's always something fun you can play around with, and this time, I decided on crème de violette. So I strongly suggest you try a vanilla bean cheesecake, and think about some fun flavors you could add as the top layer, like rose essence.


Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

crust

125 g butter

200 g maria cookies

cheesecake

600 g cream cheese

75 g butter

1 vanilla bean

2-3 Tbsp vanilla extract

150 g sugar

4 eggs

crème de violette layer

250 g quark

Lots of creme de violette (2-3 Tbsp)

Powdered sugar

First preheat your oven to 170 C, then crush up the maria cookies and melt the butter and mix well together. Then press into the bottom and sides of a springform pan and put in the oven for about 10 minutes until the cookies turn a little darker.
Now make sure your cream cheese is room temperature (it's easy just to leave it out for a few hours before cooking). Take the butter and melt in a pan over low heat. While it's melting, split the vanilla bean in half, scrape out the seeds into the butter and throw in the bean and continue to cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes. Now stir the cream cheese around in a bowl until fluffy-ish, and pour in the butter, taking out the vanilla bean, and mix together. Add the sugar and stir well, then add vanilla extract to taste. Finally, stir in the eggs until everything is well mixed and you have a wonderful vanilla flavor and pour into the springform pan. At 180C, cook for 30-35 minutes, until the edges are set but it's still pretty wobbly in the middle.
Finally, you mix the top layer. Now I normally use crème fraiche or sour cream, but lacking that I went for quark (I'm not really sure what it is…a fresh cheese or something, consistency of yogurt) and it turned out great--I would use it again. So I mixed the quark with lots of Crème de Violette and powdered sugar until it was sweet and had an amazing baby blue color (as noted before). Then cook for 10-15 minutes (I can't even remember how long I did for, just keep an eye on it till it's bubbling and the edges are darkening). The only difference I noticed with the quark was that it came out a little firmer than the rest of the cheesecake, which is fine because the rest was silky and smooth...

Ay ay ay. Enchiladas

Grrr…technical difficulties. If it's not with blogger (which I've learned to let the little things go) then it's my whole computer. Actually my computer's running fine, but the cord is out of order temporarily, so it's taken longer than normal to get the use of a comptuer long enough for my next post. But here I am and I can tell you about enchildadas now.

As much as I love Tex-Mex, I'm not the biggest fan of the typical enchilada you see at lots of restaurants. You know the kind, filled with yellow cheese and covered with a thick red sauce, like ranchero or something. I much prefer enchiladas suizas, which are made with a green sauce and sour cream.

Upon one of my outtings to a latin foods store in Barcelona, I discovered some tomatillo sauce in a can, which consisted only of tomatillo…great, because you can't find the real ones here, but this was almost as good, with nothing else added, just pure, mushed up tomatillos. Perfect for that cover recipe on Bon Appetit from June.

I changed just a few things: first of all, I don’t want my enchiladas stacked. They're enchiladas, not lasagna, they should be rolled. Second, I like plain ole cheese enchiladas, so I took out the chicken. Oh, and there are no poblano chiles here, unfortunately, so we did without. And finally, to the filling, I added some mushrooms. I think they turned out really well, but I could've done with a little extra spice or flavor, maybe that's what the poblanos were for. I would play around with it next time and see what I could come up with.

Cheese and Mushroom Enchiladas with Salsa Verde
adapted from Bon Appetit

salsa verde
3 pounds tomatillos (or about 3 15 oz. cans)
2 jalapeños, chopped
5 small garlic cloves, peeled
1 ½ tsp ground cumin
1 ½ bunches fresh cilantro
¾ cup Italian parsley
vegetable oil
salt

Mix tomatillos and jalapeños in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes. Now in a food processor, or with a hand-held blender, mix with garlic and cumin. Now add cilantro and parsley and blend a bit more. Heat a bit of oil in a skillet over medium and simmer the salsa until thickened and reduced, about 10 minutes. Finally, add the salt.

enchiladas
vegetable oil
12 corn tortillas
¾ cup sour cream
6 oz cheese (Mexican is best, like Chihuahua, but I used Emmenthal)
15-20 button mushrooms, sliced
1 clove garlic, chopped
fresh cilantro for garnishing

Heat up oil in a saucepan over medium heat and add garlic to pan. Once it’s softened after a few minutes, add the mushrooms to the pan and cook until soft but not mushy. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. Preheat oven to 375°F. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in medium skillet over medium heat. Add 1 tortilla to skillet; cook until slightly softened, about 15 seconds per side, turning with tongs. Transfer tortilla to paper towels to drain. Repeat with remaining tortillas, adding oil to skillet as needed. Now you’re reading to assemble the enchiladas. Get a large casserole dish, and one by one, take a tortilla and fill it with a bit of cheese and some mushrooms, then roll the edges over and place edges-down in the dish. Remember to save some cheese to put on the enchiladas. When you've finished with all the tortillas, pour the salsa verde on, then sprinkle the cheese, and finally, pour the sour cream all over the top(the measurement is just a guide, put however much you see fit, in my case it was lots). Bake until the salsa is bubbling and it's browned on the top, maybe 35 minutes but could be sooner. Now throw on some cilantro and eat 'em, not that they come out of the dish perfectly, mine kinda didn't hold their rolled shape, but they still tasted just as good.

BeforeAfter

Chocolate Marquise

Woo hooo! There are actually people out there (other than those who are forced, such as my friends, their friends, my family, and their friends) who read the Dough Ball. Or at least one person. I recently discovered that my Pesto Truffles had been featured as part of another foodblogger’s cupcake recipe, which you can see here (you just have to scroll down a bit). She even says they were "perhaps the most important component." My creation was the cherry on top, or rather, the truffle on top. But yay.

So now to the growing list of food I’ve made but haven’t written about yet. First off, Chocolate Marquise from Simon Hopkinson’s Second Helpings of Roast Chicken. This recipe I had been eyeing for quite a long time, as it seemed to be pure chocolate with a pistachio custardy-sauce. My one problem was I couldn’t find ground pistachios anywhere and I didn’t have a food processor. Enter ground hazelnuts found in Germany and left over from Gateaux Breton. In my book, there’s nothing better than the combination of chocolate and hazelnut. So I got together all my ingredients, and the recipe looked kinda long, but honestly it’s pretty easy. You just heat all the chocolate and butter, etc. things up for the marquise, and then refrigerate it overnight. Words of wisdom: when he says add in the order that he writes, do it. I put butter in at the end for a little extra shine because I thought the chocolate mixture looked dull, but instead of shine I got butter that separated from the marquise in the final product…ooops. Oh, and the hazelnut sauce was so good I ate it with a spoon. Literally. Now I know where the saying comes from. The only thing was the chocolate was so rich that you needed lots of sauce for just a tiny amount of marquise, which was okay, because it made lots of sauce (which I took care of).


Marquise au Chocolat ‘Taillevent’, Sauce a la Noisette
thanks Simon Hopkinson (thought I’d just make a note, I don’t know if anyone else has noticed who’s read his little Roast Chicken books where he picks out some of his favorite foods/ingredients and goes through them, giving a few recipes for each. Well, the Marquise is found under the cocoa chapter, although no part of it includes cocoa…typo?)

marquise
280 g dark chocolate
100 g powdered sugar
185 g unsalted butter, softened
5 eggs, separated
pinch of salt

hazelnut paste
120 g roasted and husked hazelnuts
130 g sugar
2 egg whites

sauce
100 g hazelnut paste
1 litre milk
8 egg yolks (7 works ok, because that’s all I used)
250 g sugar

To make the marquise, first gently melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Now add, in this order (really in this order!), mixing well after each addition: 70 g of the powdered sugar, all the butter and the egg yolks. Remove from the heat. Beat the egg whites in another bowl until stiff, then add the remaining 30 g powdered sugar and beat until glossy. Add one-third of this to the chocolate mixture to loosen it, folding it in carefully but thoroughly. Now add the rest, using the same action. Rinse a large terrine mould with water and fill with the mixture. Cover with saran wrap (cling film for the slow Brits) and chill for 24 hours.
To make the paste, simply grind the hazelnuts in a food processor until as smooth as possible (not so ‘simple’ if you don’t have a food processor, Simon), then add the sugar and egg white until it forms a paste. Store in a screw-top jar and keep in the fridge, where it will last for a week at least. And it makes extra, I still have some sitting around my freezer, wondering if I should just make more sauce and drink it…
To make the sauce, put the paste and milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and leave to infuse for at least 5 minutes. Whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until thick and then combine with the warm milk. Cook gently over moderate heat, stirring constantly until lightly thickened—a custard, in other words. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl and chill.
To serve, cut thin slices from the marquise (use a thin sharp knife dipped into hot water), arrange on plates and spoon the sauce around.

Turkish Delight

Somebody asked me when the first time I had falafel was and I can’t remember. I’m surprised it’s not stuck in my mind because it seems like after taking that first bite it would be branded in my memory forever.

Falafel is probably my favorite snack/late-night food. It’s not so common in the US to have loads of kebab places, especially in the touristy center of a city. But they’re definitely plentiful here in Barcelona and all last year I was fortunate to live about a minute’s walk from the best one, Dionisos. This place is Greek kebabs, and they have the best lamb, which I occasionally get, but it’s hard for me to stray from my favorite hummus and falafel pita. And Berlin was like a playground for me, home of the kebab. One of my favorites was Habibi just because their hummus was super smooth and tasty. I’m not, however, a fan of falafel that is deep fried into a crispy, golden-brown ball. I prefer the lighter fried, so there’s a slight crisp, but it’s not as if you are eating a shell to get through to the good stuff.

I’ve become a hummus-making machine. I think it’s about the easiest thing to do, and made 100 times easier when I used a hand blender to mix everything together. So, I’m not going to post about making hummus. Instead, the other night, I got the hankering to make falafel, for only the second time in my life (to make it myself). I browsed through recipes and looked at the main ingredients, and then sort of through everything together, tasting and checking the color, consistency as I went along. So I’m just going to list the ingredients without exact measurements because I think it doesn’t have to be exact.

And like I said before, I don’t like the hard, super-fried balls, so I formed mine into patties and fried them lightly till they were golden but still soft and a little fragile, and they came out great.



Falafel Wraps

falafel
about 250 g or a few cups chickpeas (I used dried ones soaked overnight and not cooked, plus a bit of the water)
1 whole small onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
lots of cilantro
lots of parsley
toasted cumin (about 1 Tbsp.)
1 tsp. baking soda
good pinch of salt

yogurt sauce
1-2 cups natural yogurt
½ cucumber
1 clove garlic
mint (often used but I didn’t have any)

tortillas/durums for wraps
lettuce
tomato

The first thing I made was the yogurt sauce because it can be set aside for later and it’s very easy. Chop the garlic, peel the cucumber and chop into little pieces, and then in a bowl mix together the yogurt, garlic, and cucumber. Done.
The easiest thing to do is find a hand blender or regular food processor and put the chickpeas, onion, and garlic in and combine. Then pulse in the cilantro, parsley, cumin, baking soda and salt. If it looks like you need more greens, put them in. If it tastes like nothing, add more salt. If it’s dry, put in more chickpea-water. Mine came out pretty green, which I think was fine, I liked the color. When you’re happy with them, form them into patties. While you’re doing this, in a big pan, heat up some vegetable oil, about ½ - 1 inch deep, to medium-high. I always figure out how hot it needs to be after seeing the first one cook, you don’t want it to turn dark brown, but a nice golden color, it should take a few minutes, probably 3-5 for each side. Place a few patties in the oil, and when they turn a nice color, flip them until they’re done. Then drain on paper towels.

While those are draining, get all your other stuff ready: lay out the durums, first heating them up in the microwave. Chop lettuce and tomato, along with some extra cilantro. Now you’re ready to assemble. Put a couple falafels on the durum, spread on some yogurt sauce and sprinkle with lettuce, tomato, and cilantro. Roll up and enjoy. I must say this is a wonderful food to transport if you wrap it in foil. Not only did I feel like I was eating a kebab off the street, but better, but it doesn’t have to be steaming hot to enjoy. So it was a nice lunch the next day to pack up and take outside.