CARROT & LEMON BAKED FALAFELS

Hello everyone! This is Rita here. Let me start by telling you all about the nature of our relationship with falafels before we became vegan. We live in a country where there's not much influence (if any) of international cuisines apart from the italian cuisine and perhaps a bit of the indian. So our relationship with middle-eastern food started and ended with fast food, thanks to a mediterranean and middle eastern fusion fast-food chain we have around here. Period. So naturally, we thought (not actually thinking through though) that there was no way those tiny deep-fried crispy balls we used to have every now and then could be healthy. After we started getting interested in healthy plant-based foods, we soon realized that falafels and hummus (and other good stuffs) are pretty much a healthy vegan staple not only in the countries they were originated in but actually all over the world as well! We started making our own falafels based on recipes we'd find online and quickly challenged ourselves to create our own original recipe for healthy baked falafels. Those fast-food deep-fried ones now have nothing on our take on falafels.

One of our main goals here was to somehow create a recipe for somewhat lighter falafels. They're usually pretty dense, if you eat as few as 3 of those little bastards you'll be full of chickpeas up to your eyeballs. Hence the addition of grated carrots. The classic middle eastern falafel recipes also don't call for cashew nuts but we've added them anyways because not only they provide flavour to this recipe, but they actually contribute with great texture as well. The idea of using whole cumin seeds instead of cumin powder was born out of my laziness that one day I didn't feel like grinding my own spices and just threw the whole seeds in the food processor along the other ingredients. It actually turned out so yummy I've never used cumin powder in my falafel recipe ever since. Whole seeds have got a fresher taste that really goes well with the lemon and parsley in these babies.

We've chosen to bake our falafels flat instead of rolling them into little balls, and let me tell you why. I'm a full-blown perfectionist. And the fact that you have to roll them around on the baking tray while they're in oven, in the hopes of getting the even, golden brown falafels only to end up with dalmatian-looking ones wasn't working for me. If you flatten them out you'll just have to flip them once on the baking tray and they'll be perfectly golden brown on both sides, perfectly crisp and yummy. We serve them in a nice rainbow salad bowl and bring it all together with this awesome Lemon & Tahini dressing (which you will want to drizzle over everything once you try it!).