A simple falafel recipe with fava beans and chickpeas: a nice dish for spring season. I don’t put a lot of chickpeas to preserve the delicate taste of fava beans. In this recipe, the falafels are simply fried. As indicated below, there are many ways to serve these falafels! On the recipe photo, I served them with a sweet potato mash for instance. Enjoy!
Falafel with fava beans
Ingredients
- 400 g peeled fava beans fresh or frozen
- 150 g cooked chickpeas
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 small onion or 2 green onions
- 2 tbsp chopped parsley
- 2 tbsp chives
- 2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 2 tbsp flour for instance, chickpea flour, but you can use all kind
- salt
- pepper
- olive oil
Instructions
- Put the peeled fava beans and the cooked chickpeas in a salad bowl.
- Chop the garlic cloves and the onion. Add them in the salad bowl.
- Add all the spices.
- Put the mixture in a blender and mix gently until the mixture is finely chopped (you don't want to obtain a mash…).
- Then, put it back in the salad bowl and add the flour. Mix well.
- You can taste the preparation to adjust the seasoning if needed.
- With a table spoon (or even better, an ice cream scoop spoon), form a small ball with the preparation. Then I smash it a little bit with my hands to obtain a “pebble” shape. It’s easier to fry. Repeat this step until you have used all the mixture.
- Heat a pan with a drizzle of olive oil.
- Put your falafel in the hot pan and fry for 5 minutes on both sides.
Notes
You can make these falafels without fava beans and only chickpeas. Of course you can also adapt the seasoning.
Why not sprinkling some sesame seeds on the falafels?
Note than you could also use a deep fryer to cook them, or cook them in the oven.
Serve the falafels as a side dish with vegetables for instance for a complete vegetarian meal.
Or serve them as a mezze with a tahini sauce or yogurt sauce for instance.
You could also put them in a pita sandwich with yogurt sauce, raw vegetables and some fresh herbs.