falafel

Falafel

Above: falafel balls; Below: falafel production in Ramallah, West Bank
Origin
Place of origin	Egypt
Dish details
Course served	main course or snack
Serving temperature	hot, as a sandwich filling or by itself
Main ingredient(s)	fava beans, garbanzo beans
Variations	many
Other information	Spread north from Egypt to the Levant. Now popular worldwide.

Falafel (pronounced /fəˈlɑːfəl/; Arabic: فلافل‎ falāfil (help·info) Egyptian and Sudanese Arabic, طعمية Ta'miyya) is a fried ball or patty made from spiced chickpeas and/or fava beans. Originally from Egypt,^[1] falafel is a popular form of street food or fast food in the Middle East.

The Arabic word "falafel" (falāfil) may be the plural of فلفل (filfil) 'pepper',^[2] but more relevantly, it is an adjective for fluffy/crunchy things, as in رز مفلفل (roz mfalfel), a kind of cooked rice, and شعر مفلفل (shar'r mfalfel), curly hair. It is also transliterated felafel and filafil.

Falafel is usually served in a pita-like bread called lafa, either inside the bread, which acts as a pocket, or wrapped in a flat bread. The falafel balls, whole or crushed, may be topped with salads, pickled vegetables and hot sauce, and drizzled with tahini-based sauces. Falafel balls may also be eaten alone as a snack or served as part of a mezze. During Ramadan, they are sometimes eaten as part of an iftar, the meal which breaks the daily fast after sunset.

History

This section requires expansion.

Originally made with fava beans in Egypt, the dish later migrated northwards, where chickpeas replaced the fava.^[1] It may originally have been invented by the Egyptian Copts as a fasting dish.^[3] Along with other Arab dishes, falafel was adopted by early Jewish immigrants to Palestine as a "deliberate attempt to relinquish Diaspora habits in favor of a new existence in Palestine" and to "adopt certain Arab models that they perceived as related to Jewish existence in the mythical, Biblical past" to the point that falafel has now become a "signifier of Israeli pride".^[3]

Ingredients

An example of a falafel restaurant, in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood in Haifa, Israel.

Falafel is made from fava beans or chickpeas or a combination of the two. The Egyptian variation uses fava beans exclusively, while other variations may use only chickpeas. Palestinians and Yemenite Jews in Jerusalem historically made their falafel from chickpeas and parsley only, as in Syria and Lebanon, and this continues to be how falafel in known throughout the Levant today.^[4][5] Unlike many other bean patties, in falafel, the beans are not cooked prior to use. Instead they are soaked with bicarbonate of soda, then ground with the addition of a small quantity of onion, parsley, and spices such as cumin and coriander. The mixture is shaped into balls or patties, then deep fried. Sesame seeds are sometimes added before frying; this is particularly common when falafel is served as a dish on its own rather than as a sandwich filling.

Recent culinary trends have seen the chickpea supplant the fava bean in popularity. Chickpea falafel is served across the Middle East and has been popularized by expatriates of those countries. However, fava-bean falafel continue to predominate in Egypt and Sudan and their respective expatriate communities.^{[citation needed]}

Variations

Falafel that has been thinly sliced and deep fried in Tel Aviv, Israel

Outside of the Middle East, a pita is often used, the pocket stuffed with different ingredients; in Arab countries a round khubz, 'eish' in Egypt, is halved and the resulting pieces are used to create a cigar-shaped wrap. In Arab countries, hummus (chickpeas puréed with tahini) is rarely used as a condiment, the usual sauce being tahini (sesame seed paste) thinned with water and lemon. The most common salad ingredients are tomato and parsley. In Lebanon, parsley is mixed with chopped mint leaves. It is also common in Syria and Lebanon to add pickles; the two canonical ones are pickled turnip, colored pink with beetroot, and pickled cucumber. Recently, there has been a new "filled" falafel, its center usually consisting of ground meat or minced onions or a boiled egg. These fillings are wrapped with falafel mixture and deep fried. The salads or the pita itself may be seasoned with salt or sumac, which is very commonly used in Syria;^[6] alternatively, these may be sprinkled on top. A variety that is sliced and refried has been encountered in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Similar dishes

• In the cuisine of Karnataka, ambode is a fried ball of soaked chickpeas. It is usually flattened and pan-fried, and served with chutney. Alternatively, in South Indian cuisine, paruppu vadai (Tamil) / pappu vadaa/masala vadaa (Telugu) is used to refer to flattened, fried balls (or fritters) of a mix of lentils and chickpeas. Different kinds of lentil mixtures are used, including mung beans.

• Dahi vada is a spiced fritter of fried, soaked lentils served in chilled yoghurt (dahi). The recipe can be the same as felafel (chickpeas, onion, cumin).

• In Italian cuisine, there is a chickpea fritter called frittata di ceci; other similar Italian dishes include panelle and farinata.

• Acarajé, an Afro-Brazilian street food from the northeastern state of Bahia, are pureed black-eyed peas formed into a ball and then deep-fried in palm oil.

• Shimbra Asa, is a specialty in Ethiopian cuisine. The chickpea dough is formed into various shapes (some use cookie cutting shapes) and is then pan fried before being added to a hot, spicy stew called wot, where it soaks up the spiciness, yet remains crunchy and chewy on the inside.

See also

• Middle Eastern cuisine
  • Arab cuisine
  • Cypriot cuisine
  • Egyptian cuisine
  • Iraqi cuisine
  • Israeli cuisine
  • Lebanese cuisine
  • Palestinian cuisine
  • Syrian cuisine

References

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Cookbook:Falafel

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Falafel