Falafal from Oasis Cardiff

so we're here today with chef have ease from the oasis kitchen and we're going to be making our famous falafel for that you'll need some soaked chickpeas leave them in the fridge in some cold water overnight some spring onion some fresh garlic some green chili some whole cumin seeds coriander seeds black pepper we've got a little bit of paprika there some salt some bicarbonate of soda that's going to give them a bit of rise and lightness some fresh dill and some fresh coriander and just a little bit of water to bring the mixture together and then you'll need a food processor spatula a slotted spoon a food thermometer if you've got it but if not then i'll show you the the wooden spoon trick with getting the oil to the temperature that you need if you've got a deep fat fryer then that's really good but if not you can use a saucepan with some oil in it you'll need a bowl for mixing and you'll need some paper towel just to drain off the falafel so havisa is going to do the cooking and i'm going to do the talking so first javis is going to take the chickpeas [Music] and it's really important that you use dry chickpeas that have been soaked overnight because it's the starch in the chickpeas that binds the mixture together and gives it the real nice texture that you want so harvest is gonna just pulse the chickpeas when the food processes turned on so he wants to bring the chickpeas together so we've got a bit of a of course almost uh like couscous texture so it still needs a little bit more but he's getting it going so he's going to get the chickpeas going first and then he's going to add all of the other ingredients together and bring it together into a dough so falafels are a firm favorite in oasis it's on the menu at most places that we go falafel's one of those comfort foods that you'll probably find all throughout the middle east and africa so now that we've got nice texture in there heavies are just gonna have the spring onion and the garlic again it's really good to do this in stages just so you can get everything mixed together so it's going to add the the coriander in there you see it's just roughly chopped because the food processor is going to do most of the work for you anyway so a little bit coriander and a little bit of dill all of the weights and measurements will be in the recipe for now this is just to show you what to do so we've got the coriander and the dill in there and also we're going to add the fresh green chilli of course add as much or as little as you want and then we're going to add in add in the spices adding the spices afterwards yeah so we're going to blend this up first so again yeah the blender is going to do all of the work for us normally we use a meat mincer for this but we realize that not everyone has a meat mincer at home so food processor is really the next best thing and javis has done this so many times that he just kind of knows when it's starting to come together i wish you could smell that the dill and the coriander the garlic and the spring onion beautiful little flecks of green in there looking great okay still needs a bit more it's really important to stop mix it a little bit incorporate it all give it another go and that's why javis is pulsing it he's not just doing it all the time he's pulsing it just to have a look yeah look at where he wants so now he's going to turn the mixture out into the bowl so we'll move move the food processor out of the way okay so mixture into a bowl and again you've got like that couscous bread crumby texture if you've got some bits that are a little bit bigger than others then that's absolutely fine because they're going to go a bit more crunchy and give a bit of texture and the smaller bits are going to go really nice and fluffy and bind together but you can see just by looking at that mixture that even though we haven't added any binder in it's really starting to stick together and that's because we've used dried chickpeas that we've soaked and then ground together it's that excess starch inside the chickpeas that act as your binder so these chickpeas these falafels are completely vegan and gluten free because we don't use any flour and we don't use any eggs as a binder just the natural starchiness of the chickpeas so now we've got some whole cumin seeds we really like to put whole seeds in our falafel because it just gives that real nice pop of flavor whole coriander seeds black pepper you could use coarse black pepper if you wanted to or fine black pepper bicarbonate soda again we use bicarbonate soda and not baking powder because baking powder has got flour in it so it wouldn't make these gluten-free so we use bicarbonate soda and that just gives it a rise and it also gives it a nice crispy crunch on the outside some salt always really important to season your food of course and paprika although we've put these spices in our falafel these aren't the spices that you have to use in falafel you can use whatever you want whatever you want okay and if he's just going to put in a little bit of water he's going to mix it together to see if it's the texture that he wants you want it slightly loose you don't want it too dry you do want a little bit of moisture in there because it's the moisture and the acidity from the ingredients and the bicarbonate of soda that's going to give the falafel a bit of a rise but if it's too wet it's just going to fall apart in the fryer if it's too dry then it's going to be tough as old boots when they cool down so again it's just about feeling it it's just about knowing where it comes to yeah that's that's looking good that's looking good really nice colors in there again really lovely smells it's such a shame that you can't smell this i'm just going to try and tidy up and film at the same time bit of gorilla filming with the with the camera okay so that's looking good so traditionally these would be formed using a falafel press but we understand that not everybody has a falafel press on their person so the next best thing that you can use is your hands so chef of ease is going to show you now just the type of shape that you would do to form these up with your hands okay and then he's going to drop them into the hot oil and cook them as you can see it's starting to bubble a little bit okay we're going to check the temperature of the oil with a digital thermometer if you don't have a digital thermometer you don't need to worry because there is another way of checking the temperature of the oil so that temperature is really starting to come up we want it to be around the 170 mark okay but if you don't have a food food thermometer you can use the end of a wooden spoon and just pop that inside the oil and you can see it's fizzing away you know that that oil is hot it's reacting in the water in the wood and it's going to start frying so i mean he's just going to form these in his hands now he's wearing gloves just so they don't stick but if you don't have any gloves just dip your hands in a little bit of water and go from there so you're just going to roll roll it into a ball into you know maybe a ping pong ball shape you can squash it and have it a little bit oblong if you want and do it into a doughnut yeah do whatever shape you want yeah it doesn't matter okay and now he's just going to drop that into the hot oil always when you're putting things into oil do it away from you always away from you not towards you you can see they're fizzing up and bubbling lovely that's only going to need three four minutes absolute maximum and you'll be able to see the outside color of it when it's ready so again javis is just going to do another shape now again it's more of like a a cuff the kibby like rugby ball shape again you can do that one and drop it in again don't be too you know shy of the oil nice and they're fizzing away we've fried thousands of these things by now haven't we have these yeah or more yet yeah and we've got this one got a bit of a longer one you know it all depends what you want it what you want to do with the falafel do you want to put them in a salad so you might want them a certain shape do you want to put them in a wrap you might want them a bit longer do you want to do a falafel burger if you want to do a falafel burger you might do is a bit of a patty so we'll just do the three there what you'll need is a slotted spoon just to have a look at how they're getting along move them about a bit oh yeah look at the color on those now they're really see they cook so nicely and don't be too afraid of too dark of color because of the greenery in inside the actual falafel mixture it's gonna be a little bit darker okay but don't don't be afraid all right if you've got a nice dark outside like those those aren't burnt it's just the nice green um spices and herbs are really caramelizing up but they look lovely so we just put them on uh some kitchen towel to drain okay and then from there we'll just transfer them into a bowl and we'll get that nice kind of final shot so there we've got our falafel we'll just break those open you can see on the inside there really nice and fluffy interior yeah lovely and now with those falafel you can do what you want with them we like to put ours in a wrap with some salad and some chili sauce or you can have them with some hummus do whatever you want with them but that is our basic falafel recipe i hope you enjoy say bye heavies