Tom's Crispy Mexican Garlic Falafel Recipe | Shelf Life

Is there anyone that doesn't love falafel? Crispy, garlicky, herby, herbal, Aden, spice laden, delicious man. So I'm going to do some pittas for you with Mexican style falafel. We're going to be doing some salsa matcha. We're going to be doing some tahini sauce. We've got some nice Pickles. First thing we're going to do is get on with our falafel mix. Dried chickpeas and dried black beans are everywhere, so so even amounts in water. With a little bit of bicarbonate soda and salt. I'm going to put in about 1/3 loads of garlic, half a bunch of coriander. Get that in amazing spring onions with some really good greens on them. I'm just using the spring onion greens because they're a bit drier than onion. I've made like a Mexican spice mix in here. I've got some clove, some allspice, some cumin, a bit of anise, cinnamon, some oregano. Got a little bit of bicarb and soda that's going to help those falafels get crispy. Now we're going to get that top on. If you don't have these spices, by the way, Taco seasoning would be amazing. For Mexican falafels, this bit can be a bit smoother, but we want to pass through all of the rest of the chickpeas and keep them a little bit more textured. Otherwise you're going to have a really stodgy falafel. Now I'm going to go in with the rest of my beans and chickpeas, some fennel seed and coriander seed, which I've toasted a good amount of salt so they taste delicioso. My falafel mix is done, and before I shape him and fry him, I'm going to make a little salsa matcha. It's like a kind of like a peanut chili pesto. It is absolutely next level with falafels. Usually it's made with lots of amazing Mexican chilies, but I couldn't get them. I'm using a mix of Indian finger chilies, dried and Kashmiri chilies. It's a little bit like Pasilla chili, which is traditionally used in salsa matcha and I think it's going to be really good. OK, alright, so it's well easy. All you need to do is put a bunch of mild olive oil. You could use different oil, use whatever you got lying around about 100 mil that goes into your pan and then you want to just separately toast three things. Garlic, peanuts, chilies. OK, he's looking great. Let's scoop those out. Now we're going to go with some garlics. You just want to fry these until they're brown around the outside and then take them out. You kind of want the inside of these to be a little bit raw still. That's going to give you your salsa, a really nice heat. We just want to burnish the outside and get a little bit of that toasted garlic flavour. And finally the chilies. Now this takes moments. You don't want to burn these or then your salsa is going to be bitter. You kind of want them to, like, puff up, get really amazing, and then that is it. Wow, the smell in here is insane. Just scoop those out, spilling them everywhere out they come. So I've popped him into the chamber. He's been cooling for about 15 minutes. I seasoned it with a bit of salt because I know he's going to want that. Then I'm going to add a bit more cold oil. Then we're going to be adding vinegar, maybe a bit of sugar if we if we need it. That's what we're talking about. Oh, so I've just seasoned him with a little bit of sugar, a little bit of cider vinegar, tiny bit of oregano. That's just incredible. Also, you could just toss noodles in this and it would be like super Chinese. You could definitely make falafel with it. Speaking of which, let's shape and fry some falafels. So you can shape your falafel with your hands if you like. But what I'm doing is using two spoons to kind of like, turn it around like that. It's called the quenelle. It's good because it gives you lots of nice crackly edges. I'm going to grab one and I'm going to slip them in. Don't move your falafel straight away because otherwise they might start falling apart and you can fry like 6 at a time. Depends on the size of your pan and depends on, yeah, that's it. The size of your pan. All right, that's my falafels. Done. Let's eat. See you then. Absolute ticket. I just like to show you one. Crunchy. Amazing. OK, I'm going to quickly show you how to make tahini sauce, Best sauce there ever is. And then we're going to build some sandwiches. What then? We're going to build some pitters, 250 mils of tahini, 50 grams of lemon juice, the salt. And I've added to that a pasted clove of garlic. And then this is the fun bit. Start mixing that and then suddenly it's going to go all curdled. Don't worry, because then you start adding water to it gradually and then it comes back together. It's like delicious magic. You grab your ice water, you start to add that bit by bit, 200 mils. So we need. That's basically your sauce. And he's incredible. And tahini sauce. You can toss that with noodles. We're basically making Chinese food today. Good tahini sauce starts with good tahini. My favorite brand is Alnakhil Tahini sauce. Ready. Now Let's eat. So I made some pitters earlier just for the occasion, but you could go out and buy your own flatbreads or Pitta breads or any bread you can get your hand on or you know, give making some of the whirl. For my Pickles, I've taken a jar of pickled red cabbage and I stirred through some red onions and radish and I've got salsa matcha, which is looking royal. So here we are guys. These are my Mexican style crispy garlic falafels. So I've got my amazing little pitter I'm going to slip off the top. Then in the base I'm going to put some tahini, a little bit of my salsa matcha, a really gnarly craggly falafel. Two of those for me, my Pickles slice of abo, this is that will do. That will do. No How is there no one here? I'm sorry. That's too nice. Look, guys, that's my Mexican style. It's all over my face. That's my Mexican style. Crispy garlic, falafel pitters. I implore you to make it because it's really special. Shelf life points 10:10 to 11:00. Deliciousness points pretty up there. All the way up there, in fact. That is fantastic. Thank you for watching another episode of Shelf Life. Going to go wash my hands now.