Drunk and Full

What is the one thing Israelis and Palestinians can agree on? Falafel! Falafel is the epitome of Middle Eastern street food. It’s balls of fried chickpeas, accompanied by sesame tahini, and salad, and served up in a pita. It’s kosher, it’s halal, heck, it’s even parve. (What’s parve? Don’t worry, I’d never heard of it for the first two decades of my life either. Parve means it contains neither dairy, nor meat, so people who keep kosher can eat it at any time).

It’s good to have a few meal options on hand that you can make without advance planning or a special trip to the grocery store, and falafel is one of those meals. Throw a package of pita in the freezer, put some boxes of falafel mix in your cupboard, always keep a jar of tahina in the fridge, and have salad ingredients on hand. Then, when you’re in a bind and there’s nothing else you can make, you still have a meal to pull out of your magic hat.

When I lived on kibbutz in Israel, falafel was one of the lunch meals we’d make of Fridays. Even on my non-religious kibbutz, we had a special shabbes meal on Friday night. Most nights, we were on our own for dinner. There might be a few stray things set out in the dining room, but mostly, we had to scrounge. But on Fridays, the kitchen staff prepared an entire meal and left it in the fridge. Whoever was on guard duty would put the trays of chicken and potatoes in the oven and pull the salads from the fridge, and serve everything up at 9 PM. Because there would be meat for dinner, Friday lunches were always vegetarian. We’d make either pizza, bourekas (phyllo dough filled with seasoned mashed potatoes or soft cheese), or falafel. On kibbutz, we’d deep fry the falafel balls. We had a little instrument, like a melon baller, and we’d plop the balls into a pot of boiling oil. But on kibbutz, we had a 55-gallon drum of oil off the loading dock. At home, I don’t have such access to oil, nor do I care to deep fry anything. I mix up my falafel from mix that I buy in bulk at my co-op, and I fry it in a film of oil, making small, flat, dry pancakes. But it doesn’t matter that they’re dry because we’re going to drown them in tahini …

The key to falafel is tahini. If I’d never lived in Israel, I don’t think I’d ever have learned to make tahini – it just never entered the American diet the way its sibling, hummus, did. But in Israel, it was a staple. At those famous Friday night dinners, there were dishes of tahini, dusted with paprika, on each table and we’d dip challah into it. Yum!

Tahini starts with tahina – sesame seed paste. You can find it in the health food section of your store, or the ethnic food aisle, or next to the peanut butter. It should contain only sesame seeds. If it contains other ingredients, it is pre-made tahini and you are better off without that. Put a couple spoonfuls of tahina in a deep bowl. Add salt and pepper, paprika, and a clove or two of crushed garlic. Next, you’re going to do something counter-intuitive: add water. Stir it up with a whisk. At first, it will look disastrous. But then it will start to get creamy. Now add a few spoonfuls of lemon juice and continue stirring. Add more water if need be. I’m not giving proportions here, because I don’t know them. Just add things bit by bit and I’m sure it’ll be fine. You can taste it, but it’ll taste a bit harsh. Don’t worry, it’ll taste fine in the falafel and it will taste delicious with bread or crackers tomorrow, after it’s mellowed overnight. The final consistency is up to you. I like mine a little creamy, rather than liquidy.

Now make your salad. Put in whatever you want. A basic one with lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and grated carrot is fine. If you were Israeli, you’d cut everything very fine. But I’ve gotten lazy – I cut it small enough to fit easily into a pita, but I’m not getting out the microscope and calipers. One thing I do here, which we never did there, was I put vinaigrette on my salad. I find that makes the whole thing a little tangier and juicy.

Now, assemble your falafel. Nuke your pita for a few seconds, put about 3 small pancakes of falafel in a half-pocket, add some tahini, stuff your salad in, add more tahini. Have your tahini close by to add more as you eat. It we were eating falafel at a stand in Israel, there’d be plentiful and colorful additions – shredded cabbage salads, peppers of all kinds. How elaborate you get is up to you.

Falafel is such a perfect meal, that’s why I urge you not to forget about it. It’s easy. It’s vegetarian (even parve, remember!). It’s got protein (chickpeas, sesame), vegetables, carbs (I use whole wheat pita, by the way), and zest (lemon juice, garlic, and any crazy ingredients you decide to put in your salad).

And now, “b’teavon!” as they say in Israel, or “bon appétit!” as we might say here.