Falafel and a Bath Break

I did it!  I made my first falafel for dinner last night.  I had fully intended to purchase Ziyad brand falafel mix in a box, but when I saw this post at Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice, a blog I've been following recently, I couldn't resist trying these.  I'm sure Ziyad brand falafel mix in a box is good, but I figure anything made from scratch with fresh herbs and newly acquired spices has got to be better, right? 

Another aspect which attracted me to this post and recipe was the fact that there was a recipe for skillet flatbread accompanying it.  I think these skillet flatbreads are so cool!!  I had wanted to make my own pita breads for the first time, but these skillet flatbreads are perfect for falafel in the summer and are sooo easy.  No heating up the oven, just two minutes per flatbread in the cast iron skillet! The only change I made to the skillet flatbread recipe was that I replaced about 1/3 of the all-purpose flour with white-whole wheat.   These skillet flatbreads can be used for sandwiches too, as Reeni suggests in her post here for salmon burgers.  These are wonderful as well!  I made them last week to test out the flatbread recipe, but I substituted fresh tarragon for the dill, and then used this tartar sauce recipe. 

So last night, after having my test run with the flatbread the week before, I was ready for the falafel.  I had a little problem with my falafel mixture staying together in 1 Tbsp balls after the mix had chilled in the freezer for 20 minutes, but that was the only issue.  The only thing I could see to do at the moment was to add flour to the mix, so I added maybe a tablespoon or so, until the mix started sticking together better.  This was only my second time cooking with a large quantity of hot oil, the first being my adventure last fall with doughnuts.  This time I was only working with oil that was 2" deep, which was nice and not so scary. 

We had three falafel balls per flatbread, nestled in with some chopped Romaine lettuce, and some tzatziki sauce, which also included a bit of chopped up fresh mint from one of my pots.  (Most of the herbs in my pots have died, but the mint is still trying to hang on.)  The outside of the falafel balls were crunchy and the inside moist and incredibly yummy from cumin, coriander, cayenne and lots of garlic.

I just had to share my first falafel attempt and hopefully there will be many more.  This stuff tastes better than fast food did from McDonalds or Wendy's when I was in my tweens :) 

Also, I thought I'd share what I did between baking tasks today.  It was the dreaded B-A-T-H day for Tucker.  It is so nice to be able to do this outside on the back patio in the warmer months.  Although Tucker is made for the water (undercoat and webbing between his toes), he is not the water dog!  I tried when he was a puppy to get him to jump in and play in kiddie pools, but he would have none of it.  I think, however, that if he could talk to me, he would tell me he rather likes the cool, cool water out of the hose, drenching his heavy fur on a 92°F day. 

Shaking off the excess H20

Finishing touches! 

Aloo Paratha (Mellow Bakers: March) & Cream of Wild Rice Soup

Aloo Paratha is a type of Indian flatbread, which is stuffed with a spicy boiled potato and onion mixture.  This was one of the breads that we could choose to make in March for Mellow Bakers, and since I'm still working on my starter for one of the other breads, I chose to try this one first. 

First of all was to gather all of my ingredients.  I needed some ghee and decided it'd be fun to learn how to make it.  After consulting several online videos/articles I made ghee during lunch one day.  I melted a stick of unsalted butter over low heat, hovering over it for ~ 45 minutes.  After the first 10 minutes, I began skimming off the foamy stuff floating on the surface and did this for about 5 minutes.  One article said the process takes ~ 35-45 minutes and one of the videos I watched said the ghee was done when you started to perceive a toffee smell.  I turned off the heat when it smelled toffeeish, and poured my ghee into a pint glass jar with a coffee filter affixed on top, to catch any impurities still left in the clear, golden ghee.  I left the ghee to sit on the counter a couple days while I gathered everything else.

One of my favorite blogs is Aparna's at My Diverse Kitchen.  She is a vegetarian cook living in Northern India so I knew she would surely have something on her blog regarding paratha.  Sure enough she had a video, which I'm including here,

and a recipe for her version of aloo paratha.  Since the recipe in the video was for making 8 parathas, I went ahead and used their ingredient list for making the dough.  However, I neglected to look back at our Bread book to read that the dough should be made w/ 2 parts whole wheat flour to 1 part unbleached bread flour.  Oooops!!  I made my dough with all whole wheat flour, but it tasted fine and was easy to work with.  For my potato filling I kind of looked to Aparna's recipe for the spices and I decided to use a couple Yukon Gold potatoes (a larger potato with yellow skin and golden, waxy flesh) and red onion.   The spices I used were:

chili powder (1/8 tsp + pinch)

coriander (1/8 tsp + pinch)

cumin (1/2 tsp)

garam masala (1/4 tsp)-this is one of my favorite spice blends consisting mainly of coriander, black pepper, cumin, cardamom, and cinnamon.

I forgot to add salt to my potato filling and I really wanted to include finely chopped fresh chilies in there too, but it is not the season for them at the farmer's market and local groceries only have tasteless, shriveled orbs that they call hot peppers.  Oh, I also included a clove of minced garlic and ~ 1 Tbsp minced cilantro in the filling.  After boiling, cooling, and peeling potatoes and sauteing my onions, garlic and spices, I mixed everything together in the skillet, then dumped into a bowl to cool.  Here are my formed potato balls ready to go:

and here we are ready to fill our rolled out disks of dough with potato:

I was a little nervous that I wouldn't be able to pull all the dough up over the potato so I cheated and probably used less potato than I should have.  I will make bigger balls of potato next time.  I had no trouble bringing the dough together around the balls of potato and pinching the tops closed.  I then rolled the balls to ~ 1/4 inch thickness and tossed them into my preheated cast-iron skillet, which I had to reseason for this project.

I put a thin coating of olive oil in the skillet just in case I had sticking issues.  After cooking 2 minutes on each side, I brushed each side with some ghee I had heated on low, and cooked a minute or so more on each side.  They got puffy as they were cooking and the last couple even puffed up like pita breads do when baked in the oven.

We didn't eat until almost 7:30, but the adventure was worth the wait and we had some wonderful, piping hot cream of wild rice soup (thickened w/ potato flour) to go with our aloo paratha.

We definitely want to up the spicyness of these next time, including some fresh, hot chili peppers, from the farmers market, but this was excellent for our first Indian cuisine.  I will have to work on learning to make some chutney variations to go with this.  Tucker, my sous chef, approved of these too, judging by the amount of drool on my husband's pant leg, but unfortunately for him he wasn't allowed to taste test these because of the spices.

Thank you for visiting my blog and stop by mellow bakers online to see what the rest of us were up to in March!