Dinner with the Fam: Sweet Potato Falafel
Originally published at exoskeleton cabaret. You can comment here or there.
It’s becoming a weekly tradition to haul the CSA box over to the House of the Bat and the Bee-my dearest friends Chris and Bergen. Nathan and I have found that the bounty of our weekly veggie box from Local Roots Farm is too much for just the two of us to devour, so having a shared meal with our chosen family is a great way to avoid waste and have a lovely evening in the kitchen.
Chris and I have taken to pan-frying various types of greens from the CSA with nature’s candy: bacon. Last week, we gorged ourselves on kale, and this time, we married our piggy pal to local+organic zucchini, kohlrabi greens, and rainbow chard. I believe Nathan had three helpings, and even the 10-year-old in our midst, Dayde, was suitably pacified.
Inspired by another friend of mine, I also prepared baked sweet potato falafel, which assuages my pork guilt by being vegan and gluten-free. As much as I am a fan of deep-frying, these little lumps of orange awesome are baked in the oven, but still vaguely resemble the original. The traditional spices, like coriander and cumin, give the falafel a comforting Middle Eastern flavor, but these are considerably healthier than the fried sort. We definitely took advantage of the fresh cilantro found in this week’s CSA box. Yum.
The recipe came from Leon: Ingredients and Recipes by Allegra McEvedy. (Conran Octopus Ltd. 2008) by way of the 101 Cookbooks blog (and Letty). I modded it slightly, adding a baby Walla Walla onion (also from the CSA), and I swapped out the chickpea flour for Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour. I did this partially because the grocery didn’t have plain chickpea flour, and also because the gluten free stuff contains fava bean flour, which is a smidge more traditional.
Bergen deduced that the reason why my falafel weren’t nearly as pretty as Letty’s was that I had very wet and fresh sweet potatoes, and their water content probably contributed to slightly squishy falafel. Didn’t affect the taste, though, and all the wee orange plops of goo disappeared into happy bellies.
I took these three images on my iPhone as I’d left the big camera at my house. Not bad.
