Due to a very late and debauched (but lovely, thank you Sarah) evening over the road on Friday night, my Saturday started very late and with a requirement for rehydration, nutrition and energy.  The obvious solution is a smoothie, after the Berrocca.

Raw kale and blueberries for super nutrition, dates and bananas for a much needed energy boost, blue poppy seeds for protein and to reduce the GI, Natural yogurt to settle a gurgley tummy and hemp seed milk.

It’s frothy man!

Having risen late my meal times were all wrong for the day.  During the afternoon I snacked on Dr.Karg crisp breads with peanut butter.  Not a good diet choice but easy while I planned my evening’s cooking.

My sister Holly was coming for supper with her family, 2 of whom are vegetarian.  I think that if you are vegetarian for reasons of compassion towards animals, as these 2 are, it would be good to enjoy a meal where you are not sitting next to lumps of meat.  So a vegetarian meal was planned for all.

I really enjoy Middle Eastern food and that was my theme for supper.  I made falafel and taboule from a blog called Tabkhet el Yom, written by a Lebanese lady, Nina.  I have had her falafel and tabboule recipes on my ‘Recipes To Try’ page for a while and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to make them.  I also made humous and garlicky flatbreads, which I have made and blogged about before.

Nina’s falafel recipe is here.

Nina’s tabboule recipe is here.

Humous recipe is here.

Garlicky Flatbreads is here.

I do not have the falafel making gadget Nina refers to (hmmm, I think, a potential new kitchen gadget :-)) and neither did I have ‘falafel spices’ so I shall share my recipe.  It worked very well and was different to the falafel I buy in the shops or eat in restaurants but a great way to eat fresh broad beans!

Falafel

Ingredients: (serves 8)

• 1 cup of chick peas
• 2 cups of broad beans
• 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh coriander
• 1 tablespoon Falafel spices (I used 1/2 tbsp each of cumin and coriander powder)
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 onion
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 3 cloves of crushed garlic
• oil for frying

Method:

• Soak the chick peas in water for 24 hours, rinsing every 8 hours or so
• Drain the water and place the chick peas in a food processor and mix well (yes,you do use them raw)
• Rinse the broad beans and then place in the processor until finely chopped
• Add the chick peas and broad beans to a large bowl
• Place the crushed garlic, fresh coriander and the onion in the food processor and blitz
• Mix all the ingredients together in the large bowl, season with salt, Falafel spices and the baking powder
• Shape the falafel in to bowls ( we used an ice cream scoop to do this)
• Heat the oil in a frying pan and gently fry them until brown on the outside

Nina’s recipe deep fat fries the falafel and this would make them crispier than mine.  I don’t like deep fat frying so mine were shallow fried.

The chick peas and broad beans were left quite chunky.  Mainly because my food processor didn’t manage to make them finer ( I didn’t use the Vita Mix which could have made them really smooth).

When I came to make the tabboule I didn’t have any bulgar wheat or couscous.  I could have sworn I did!  So I used quinoa instead which worked well.

I had such a  lovely evening with Holly, Richard, Lucy and Emily and my family but completely failed to take any photos of everyone or the final stages of making this lovely dinner.  I also forgot to photograph my dinner plate until I had eaten some of it.  To round this out, I should have a added a dish of roasted vegetables, such as tomatoes, peppers, aubergine and courgette.  I will make this meal again as it was fun to make, really delicious and healthy. I realised later, it was not only vegetarian but vegan too.  So our dinner was Lebanese and vegan.To follow the meal we had Christmas pudding.  Yes we did.  I had bought the pud to take to Holly’s at Christmas but managed to forget it.  Holly had some brandy butter and cream left over so she brought that with her and we had the pudding.  It was not a huge portion as it was shared between 8 of us.

So a lovely evening and good food which has inspired me to seek out some more Lebanese recipes.