I host monthly dinners for my friends on Sunday afternoons.  Sort of a throwback to the family Sunday afternoon dinner between what we now consider lunch and supper, except since I don’t live near any family I invite friends and their families.  These dinners always have some sort of theme.  The most recent one was “Mediterranean.”  As part of the dinner menu I chose to make falafel, and as per my propensity to make dishes slightly healthier if I can, I found a recipe for baked (rather than fried) falafel.

Normally, when I make a dish it is usually a hybrid of several recipes or I substitute ingredients based on my experience and preference.  In this case I’ve never made falafel or anything like it, and never used dried chickpeas (that the recipe called for).  So I decided to follow the recipe exactly the first (and so far, only) time I made it.

I bought my ingredients, soaked the dried chickpeas for 24 full hours, and then made the falafel the day of the dinner.  And I am glad none of my vegetarian friends were able to come that day as they would have been stuck with hummus and veggies and salad as their only options to eat.  I’m not entirely sure what happened but the end result was, quite frankly, very dry.

My guests were kind enough to try at least one even though I voiced my concern about how dry they looked.  I quickly confirmed that they were indeed not very good and they were welcome to toss them.  I do this often, by the way, make something for the first time for guests, often without a Plan B.  This was the first time it went this much awry, but the good thing is my chicken and sides came out great so the loss of falafel wasn’t a big deal.

I decided to go ahead and box up the remainder and stick them in the fridge and see if I could salvage them for leftovers.  As I had leftover pita, tzatziki, tomato and onion, I decided to reheat some falafel for lunch during the week by sticking them in a non-stick pan with a little water and a lid.  Although they lost any exterior crunch they may have had, they did become nice and moist by essentially steaming. So the end result was a dinner party fail but leftover success!

My takeaway from this experiment was that I need to try this again and experiment with:

1. Soaking the dried chickpeas more than 24 hours
2. Using canned chickpeas instead, and letting them dry a bit before using
3. Finding a different recipe.

Below is the recipe I used, along with my notes.  Please share your experience with baked (not fried) falafel, would love to know what ended up being successful for you!