Soya Chunks Falafel

Soya Chunks Falafel..Falafel, you might be very familiar with it. A popular lebanese starter/snack, which serves as a good accompaniment for hot soups and tea for the evenings. To make a slight twist, I tried this falafel with Soya Chunks, which I found yesterday on MasterChef Sanjeev Kapoor's website, and tried the same day itself. The taste was absolutely good with tomato ketchup, though traditionally it is served with dips.

 

  

RECIPE:

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Preparation Time: 15 mins

Soaking Time: 6 hrs to overnight

Cooking Time: 10 mins

Serves: 9 no's

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INGREDIENTS: [1 cup=240 ml]

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Soya chunks or granules - 1/2 cup

Chickpeas(soaked for 6 hrs to overnight) - 1/3 cup

Onion - 1/2

Ginger - a small piece

Garlic - 4 cloves

Green Chilli - 1

Dried(or Fresh) mint leaves - 1 tsp

Coriander Leaves - 2 tbsp

Red chilli powder - 1/2 tsp

Pepper powder - little more than 1/2 tsp  

Chaat masala - 1/2 tsp

Wheat flour - 1 to 1.5 tbsp, or as req.

Salt - as req.

Oil - for deep frying 

METHOD:

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1. In a pressure cooker, add the soaked black/white chickpeas(I used black) with little salt, and water till immersed, and cook until done. I cooked for 10 whistles and it was perfect. Anyways it depends on your cooker. When done, open the lid, and strain the water, and allow the chickpeas to remain in the strainer until it is blend, so that almost no water exist in it.

2. In a vessel, boil 3 cups of water vigorously, add the soya chunks with little salt, and switch off the stove. Let it rest for 10 minutes. Then, strain to remove the water, and squeeze the soya chunks very well. Next, wash the chunks under tap water, and again squeeze them as much as you can. 

3. In a blender, except onion, and oil, add all the other ingredients including the soya and chickpeas, and blend to a coarse paste WITHOUT water. You can blend even coarser than shown. Add the onions now, and mix very well. Take a small ball from the paste, and drop it in hot oil. If the balls break, proceed to the next step. Else, go to step 5(Sounds like a programming language coding na 😉)

4. If the balls break, add in the wheat flour to the paste for binding, and again mix very well. Dont forget to check again if the balls break or not.

5. When they dont break, you can proceed to form balls from the entire paste, and deep fry them till golden brown. Strain to remove the excess oil. DONE!!

Your super yummy crunchy Soya Chunks Falafel are ready to be served!!Serve hot n njjoyy!!

NOTE:

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1. The quantity of wheat flour to be added depends on the moisture of your chickpeas and soya chunks. The minimum quantity is 1 tbsp.

2. You can also add maida/bread crumbs/cornflour/roasted besan instead of wheat flour. 

3. The source recipe didnt use any flours mentioned above for binding. I used it after referring the regular falafel recipes from a few websites.

4. Also the source used soya granules which were just soaked, but not boiled as mentioned above. You can choose either ways.

5. Some prefer boiled chickpeas and others prefer unboiled ones for the falafel recipe. Mostly the unboiled ones dont require binding flours. I used the boiled ones as per the source. You can follow either ways.