Falafel is usually served in a pita bread wrap (i.e. sandwich), and the term "falafel" commonly refers to this sandwich by synecdoche; falafel in a pita is typical street food or fast food. Along with the falafel balls, which may be crushed onto the bread or added whole, various toppings are usually included. 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.
Falafel is now seen as a uniting, pan-Middle-Eastern dish. In recent years, immigration from the Middle East to Western countries has brought with it a broader availability of Middle Eastern cuisine, and the falafel sandwich has become a popular and iconic food within alternative fast food or slow food movements, and indeed has spread worldwide.
They are also used as a vegan alternative filler to a Doner kebab in many countries.
Ingredients
Falafel is made from fava beans or chick peas or a combination of the two. Each falafel is roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. The Egyptian variation uses exclusively fava beans, while other variations may only use chick peas. Unlike many other bean patties, in falafel the beans are not cooked prior to use. Instead they are soaked, possibly skinned, then ground with the addition of a small quantity of onion, parsley, spices, bicarbonate of soda and deep fried at a high temperature. Sesame seeds may be added to the balls before they are fried; this is particularly common when falafel is served as a dish in its own right rather than as a sandwich filling.
Recent culinary trends have seen the triumph of the chickpea falafel over the fava bean falafel. Chickpea falafels are served across the Middle East, and popularized by expatriates of those countries living abroad.
Topping variations
There is more than one way to make a falafel sandwich. Only in Israel and outside the Middle East is a Greek-style Pita bread used as a pocket and stuffed with the different ingredients; in Arab countries a round 'khubz' bread 'eish' in Egypt, is halved, and the two resulting round pieces are used to create a cigar-shaped wrap. In the Arab countries, hummus (chickpeas pureed with tahina) is virtually never an ingredient. The usual sauce is tahina (sesame seed paste--marketed in the U.S. as "sesame tahini") let down or thinned with water and lemon. The most common salad ingredients are tomato and parsley. In Lebanon parsley mixed with chopped mint leaves. It is also virtually mandatory in Syria and Lebanon to add pickles; the two canonical ones are pickled turnip, colored pink with beetroot, and pickled cucumber. Palestinans like to add fried aubergine (eggplant). In Israel, Lebanon, and the UAE, french fries are a frequent addition. Recently, there has been a new "filled" falafel, its center usually consisting of ground meat or minced onions. These fillings are wrapped by the uncooked falafel mixture, and then deep fried.
In Israel, once the entire pita has been packed, tahini may be added in addition to amba, a spicy mango paste.
The salads or the pita itself may be seasoned with sumac or salt; alternatively, these may be applied to the top. In Syria, sumac is practically a universal accompaniment to falafel, whether in a sandwich or otherwise.
Falafel is becoming an increasingly common sandwich or snack food in the United States. It is frequently wrongly identified by Americans as a Greek food[citation needed], and although it is sometimes more accurately believed to be an Israeli food[citation needed], although it is a product of Arab cuisine.
Related dishes
- In Indian cuisine, ambode is a fried ball of soaked chickpeas, similar to falafel. It is usually flattened and pan-fried, and served with chutney. Alternatively, in the South Indian cuisine, paruppu vadai is used to refer to flattened, fried balls (or fritters) of a mix of lentils and chickpeas.
- Acarajé, an Afro-Brazilian street food from the northeastern state of Bahia, is similar to falafel, but made from black-eyed peas formed into a ball and then deep-fried in palm oil.
- In Italian cuisine, frittata di ceci (chickpea fritter) is very similar to falafel.
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