Homemade falafel

Falafel is one of my most favourite foods, something so deeply satisfying and reminding you of your sweet junkfood past, yet it´s very macrobiotic at the same time! 😀 Ok, not if you eat it three times a week, as it´s still deep-fried food, but once in a while…after a long walk in freezing weather like today….

It´s also really simple, as long as you don´t forget to soak your chickpeas overnight (or at least for a couple of hours, I think 12 hours is a good bet though). I soaked 100 g of chickpeas in a double amount of water, drained them and then added the rest of the ingredients: a bunch of parsley leaves, 1/4 tsp of salt (next time I will use 1/2 tsp probably), 1/2 tsp paprika powder, 1/2 tsp cumin powder, a tiny pinch of chilli powder, one (or two) garlic cloves and one small roughly chopped red onion. Usually there are also fresh coriander leaves in the recipe for falafel, sadly those are not available here at this time of the year, if you want good quality and not supermarket vegetables…Put all in a big bowl or pot. And now comes the tricky part: making a rather smooth paste out of this bunch of ingredients, using an immersion blender. It actually works, but you have to have a bit of patience, move with the blender up and down and let it rest every now and then so it doesn´t overheat. It definitely worked better than in my big blender which would need water to run, but the immersion blender strangely enough doesn´t :-p Then let the mixture rest for a few hours (I´m not sure why, but more people told me this, so I guess something magical happens!). Later on, heat up your deep-frying oil and create about 3-5 cm in diameter large balls, adding breadcrumbs to the mixture if needed. My mixture was too thin so I added some glutenfree crumbs. Fry until dark brown, otherwise the inside will not be done enough (remember – it´s just soaked and not cooked chickpeas).

I served the falafel with bulghur with raw pink radish and green daikon cubes mixed in (to help digest the fats) and a dip made of tahini, mustard, salt and ume plum vinegar 🙂

Root stew with white miso and cilantro

The main part of this meal was a root vegetable stew:  first I sauteed sliced onion with a pinch of salt on some pumpkin seed oil, then added medium-sized chunks of carrot, parsley root, red beet, celery root and daikon radish and stirred for a while to coat with oil, adding dried thyme as well. Then I covered the veggies with diluted white miso, there should be enough water so that the vegetables are at least partially submerged. I cooked them until soft on a low flame (the water shouldn´t evaporate totally, but also the stew should not be watery) and at the end garnished them with a generous amount of fresh chopped cilantro.

The other parts of the meal were: chickpeas with pumpkin (pumpkin chunks cooked until soft and then add cooked chickpeas and tamari to season), carrot tops fried until crispy on a bit of pumpkin seed oil with salt, and rice/amaranth mixture sprinkled with roasted dulse seaweed. I used dulse flakes, which are really convenient and roast very quickly – just be careful not to burn them, so keep the flame low 😀

“Guacammus”

Ever tried creating a cross breed between hummus and guacamole?? Well I did and the result was pretty delicious!!

All you need to do is blend cooked chickpeas (I even used the kombu they were cooking with) with avocado. Season with black pepper, garlic and ume plum vinegar to your liking 🙂 Great as a dip for crackers.

 

Angela´s Cinnamon sweet potato chickpea salad with Miso rice

The last few days I´m testing (and adjusting) some recipes from Angela from Oh she glows – the first one to try was Cinnamon sweet potato chickpea salad. I made it more macro-friendly by substituting the coconut oil with sesame oil and only using a tiny bit of it – from a spray.

First I chopped up one medium sized sweet potato into cubes, diced a small onion and mixed these two ingredients in a bowl with about a cup of cooked chickpeas, 1/2 tsp sea salt, 1/2 tsp  cinnamon and a sprinkle of sesame oil. I placed the mixture on a baking tray lined with a silicone baking mat and baked it in a preheated oven on 220 °C for about 40 minutes. Unfortunately, the temperature was too high or the time too long (or I used too little oil), because it came out a bit burnt (especially the onions) and too dry – next time I will need to watch it closer! 😀 Nevertheless, it was a really yummy recipe!

I served the “salad” with pressure cooked brown rice which I cooked in water with diluted brown rice miso (about 1 cup grain to 1 1/2 cup water, and using 2 tsp of miso). I wonder if anybody before had the crazy idea of cooking rice in miso broth, but it tastes surprisingly like risotto 😀

Complete meal idea

I just thought that this looks really pretty and that it´s quite a nice balanced macro meal, so here you are 😀

Grain: rice+25% sweet rice, with gomasio

Vegetable dish 1: kinpira made from dried/soaked burdock, carrot, a splash of tamari and ginger juice and finely cut carrot tops

Vegetable dish 2: chopped red cabbage sauteed under a lid with a bit of water and a tablespoon of ume vinegar and a bit of dried thyme

Protein: chickpeas with chunks of hokkaido pumpkin and some salt to taste (not in picture)

Greens: raw rucola and corn-salad lettuce

Pickle: sliced takuan (daikon pickled in rice bran)

Winter vegetable-chickpea stew

This cold January weather really called for a hearty long-cooked bean and veggie stew…so here it is! You need

about a cup of cooked chickpeas

a cup of chopped kale

a handful of small brussel sprouts cut in halves

half of a portobello mushroom, sliced

a cup of hokkaido pumpkin cut in cubes

one small onion, diced

one-inch thick slice of daikon, cut in diagonal slices

half of a carrot, cut in diagonal slices

half of a parsley root, cut in diagonal slices

1 tsp dark miso

1 tsp ginger powder

one inch piece of kombu seaweed

salt

First sautee onion with a big pinch of salt on a bit of water, until soft. Add kombu, carrot, parsley root, daikon, chickpeas, mushroom and hokkaido pumpkin and stir for a little while. Add enough water so that the vegetables are nearly submerged and cook on a medium flame for about 15-20 minutes, without a lid, until most of the water evaporates, then you can put a lid on. When kombu softens up, take it out, chop finely and return to the pot. When the pumpkin is almost soft, add brussel sprouts and kale, cook 5 more minutes. Season with ginger powder. Turn flame on lowest setting so that the water stops bubbling. Add diluted miso and simmer for 5 minutes. I served this lovely fragrant stew on a bed of pressure cooked rice with sweet rice.

Mashed teff with chickpeas

Somehow it occured to me to mash my teff * with cooked chickpeas and I think it was a nice idea so I am sharing it 😀 For flavour I added a tablespoon of tahini paste, chopped fresh parsley and salt. For mashing I used a potato masher.

I served the mash with quick sauteed vegetables: red radish, leek, carrot, daikon, green beans, green cabbage, chopped kombu (leftover from cooking the chickpeas), seasoned with tamari and lemon juice and topped with a sprinkling of hemp seeds.

* pressure cooked for half an hour with a triple amount of water

Pumpkin-sauerkraut-chick pea stew

It´s quite difficult to pick a name for this recipe, because all of the ingredients of the stew are kind of the same important 😀 In a pot I mixed chunks of hokkaido pumpkin, kohlrabi, carrot, leek rounds and cooked chickpeas and added just enough water to cover the mixture. I boiled it until the pumpkin became soft (the pumpkin is the hardest of these veggies, so no need to check the others). Towards the end I added a generous amount of natural lacto-fermented sauerkraut (be careful not to pick the one with sugar and vinegar in it…) and diluted shiro miso to taste, plus extra salt. I would prefer to add the sauerkraut at the very end after turning the flame off, but since I was going to eat it reheated in the evening, I didn´t bother, but this way you kill the beneficial enzymes (that is, if you have natural sauerkraut…). I ate the meal with a buckwheat/quinoa mix.