How to make falafel in Japan

There are certain foods that I really miss eating, and one of those is falafel. In Australia there are loads of Mediterranean restaurants that sell them, but here in Japan? Not so much. I recently stumbled across Falafel Brothers in Tokyo when I was last there, and thoroughly enjoyed my falafel fix - but that's a long way to travel from here in Niigata when I'm craving them.

I decided to try to make them at home and it was quite easy. All the ingredients were available at my local supermarket too, which made the whole process simple! If you'd like to make some too, here's what you're going to need.

400 grams of canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1 small red onion, roughly chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

A handful of flat-leaf parsley or curly parsley

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1⁄2 tsp of either harissa paste or chili powder

2 tbsp plain flour

2 tbsp sunflower oil (for cooking)

One thing I found at my local supermarket is that the canned chickpeas only came in 100 gram cans. They were also pretty expensive - 150 yen a can! When I make this again I'm going to try and check on Amazon and see what my chickpea options are. Back home the usual can size is 400 grams and would cost under a dollar in most instances. 

Teeny tiny 100 gram chickpea cans. Bonus points for adorableness. Points deducted for inconvenience and cost!

Drain those chickpeas, give them a rinse and pat them dry.

Add all your ingredients to a food processor, and give that thing a whizz. We used our small hand-powered chopper and it took a while but allowed us greater control over the consistency. 

This was part way through the chopping process. We still needed it to get a bit more "doughy" so that it would be easier to shape into patties.

When the mix becomes pretty smooth, scoop the mix into the patty size you desire and start forming them. We decided to make smaller size patties so that we could pop them in wraps or salads, but you could even make them burger sized if you wanted to.

Once you've made them into patties, heat 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil in a pan. Pop your falafel in and cook them for three minutes on either side. Of course, if you want a bit of added crunch feel free to cook them for longer - I think we would do that next time!

After that, they're ready to serve however you wish!

Next on our agenda is to make hummus from scratch to serve them with!  

The original recipe I used was from BBC Good Food and you can find the link here.