What I Ate Today

When we first had the idea of doing a food blog, my main goal was to document some ideas for exciting lunchtime foods. As Jenny will attest, I’m quite a fussy eater – not in the usual way of not eating exotic foods, rather for my reluctance to eat boring food. For me lunchtime is a bit of an issue, having spent several years being spoilt by the array of places to eat in Bristol, moving to somewhere with nothing remotely exciting to eat was a bad news. The idea of a plain cheese sandwhich on basic white bread, or ‘school meal’-type food really doesn’t appeal. I also like variation, unlike Jenny who would be happy with soup and boiled egg everyday!

This is a ‘quick’ recipe I made up which turned out to be so good that I made it twice in a week, so I had to share it on here. I’m going to split it up into two stages because the first stage you can do well in advance. First we’ll make the falafels. A few months ago I made a huge batch of ~ 30 falafels. They’re great, they store fine in the freezer and only take ~ 10 minutes to cook. Very handy if you’ve run out of food like the day I made this up.

Falafels

Ingredients

I’ve tried a few recipes before, this one from The World Food Cafe is the best I’ve found though, it serves 4-6.

• 1 tin chickpeas (225 g dry)
• 2 pitta breads or 2 slices of dry bread
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 dsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground chilli
• 2 dsp plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• handful of chopped parsley
• sesame seeds

Method

1. Using a food processor, make breadcrumbs from the bread.
2. Add everything apart from the chickpeas and sesame seeds, blend to a paste.
3. Add chickpeas, with water/more breadcrumbs if needed.
4. Roll into 1″ balls, coat in sesame seeds.

These will happily freezer for several months. To cook, just take them out a fry in sunflower oil until golden.

Constructing the Wraps

I found some massive multi-seed wraps on sale which I gave a try, I thought the size of them worked really well. I also bought some Moroccan-style Houmous (which Alice recommended).

Ingredients

Jenny and I ate two each, you could probably get away with one if you eat ‘normal’ portions. This is what I used for two wraps:

• 2 Wraps
• 3 Falafels
• 2 tbsp Tahini
• 3 tbsp Moroccan Houmous (or you could add something like Harissa paste to normal Houmous)
• 1 x Boiled Egg
• Cheddar Cheese
• Salad Leaves (Spinach?)

Method

1. If you haven’t already, fry your falafels until golden.
2. Spread a tbsp of tahini just south of the equator of the wrap, taking up 2/3 rds of the width.
3. Layer 1.5 crushed falafels on top
4. Top with Houmous, Egg, Cheese then Salad
5. Fold in the sides, Cover with the bottom, roll.
6. (Optionally) slice in half if you don’t want to look greedy