National Falafel Day is Friday

Amy Drew: Learning to make the dish from King-O-Falafel owner.

COMMENTARY chose to call him that. And I do. A. Because I’ve tasted his falafel. B. Because I am hardly the queen. Yesterday (which by now is last week), I made Blan’s recipe — tweaked slightly for the ease of the casual home chef. The mixture looked great, smelled great, tasted great. I followed all of his instructions, chilling it, then rolling my very first falafel into a cute, little ball of yum.

Then I watched it disintegrate into nothingness with a not-small amount of horror.

my internal and decidedly Adam Westian Batman cried.

And in seconds, a solution. One so easy to remember, it’s naturally alliterative:

Flour is a traditional ingredient in falafel, but just a couple tablespoons proved to be the benign, impossibleto-detect glue that bound my balls beautifully — saving dinner, and this story, which comes courtesy of International Falafel Day (June 12).

You see, falafel’s moisture-laden ingredients can make it challenging to stand up to the frying process. A little flour redirects the moisture and offers a stellar fix for home cooks like me who may not get it precisely right on the first try.

By the way, you don’t have to bind balls. You could go with a patty shape instead, which many folks find easier to eat inside pita or folded flatbread.

Just don’t make them too thin. You want to preserve the twofold experience of this ancient food, which when done right has a wonderfully crisp outside and a tender inside that gets its lovely texture from the chickpeas and rich, herbaceous flavor from the rest.

Blan’s fast-casual business, already well suited to take out, took a while to get going back in the day. But it now enjoys such a strong following that he reported next to no dip in sales due to COVID-19. Remarkable, as many regulars are annual and semi-annual