Carrot Falafels, Chickpeas And Carrot Vadas ( Fritters )

          Falafel is a traditional Middle Eastern food, served usually, stuffed in pita bread pockets along with cucumber and tomato slices, pickles and tahini sauce. It's made out of chickpeas or fava beans along with other spices. When Vijialakshmi  Dharmaraj of Virunthu Unna Vaanga gave me chickpeas and carrots as the secret ingredients for the ' Shhhhhh Cooking Challenge ', I thought I should do carrot falafels. To say a few words of Viji, she's such a sweet person, whom I got to know much better while chatting on facebook and do check her space for the nice recipe ( and of course her other wonderful recipes too ) that she came up with the ingredients that I had given her, apples and coconut. Coming back to the falafels, they turned out really superb and also very easy to make too. Since I didn't have pita bread or tahini sauce ( didn't have time to make them from scratch ), I served them on pav ( buns or dinner rolls ) along with cucumber, tomato slices, red and green chutneys and a yoghurt dip, but you can simply have them as an evening snack just with the yoghurt dip..

Need To Have

• Chickpeas/ Chana - 1/2 cup
• Onion - 1 small, chopped
• Garlic - 1 clove
• Grated Carrot - 2 tablespoons
• Cumin Seeds - 1 teaspoon
• Red Chilly Powder - 1/2 teaspoon
• Turmeric Powder - 1/8 teaspoon
• Whole Wheat Flour - 1 teaspoon
• Chopped Coriander - 1 tablespoon

For The Yoghurt Dip

• Yoghurt/ Curd - 4 tablespoons
• Chopped Coriander - 1 teaspoon
• Lemon Juice - 4 drops
• Salt to taste

Method

          Soak the chickpeas overnight and pulse it together along with the onions, garlic and cumin seeds to a coarse paste and take it out in a bowl.

          Add the grated carrot, chopped coriander, wheat flour, salt, turmeric and chilly powders and mix together. Make small patties with it.

          Heat some oil, add the patties and shallow fry them till they turn golden on both sides. Remove, drain the excess oil and serve it with the yoghurt dip.

Yoghurt Dip
          Just mix together all the ingredients for the dip.

Note
While frying the patties, do it on medium heat, it should not turn brown immediately, otherwise the inside of the patties will not be cooked properly.
Also while grinding the ingredients for the falafel, don't add any water, the paste should be coarse but you should still be able to roll it and make patties.
You can also add some minced chillies to the falafels and some pepper powder to the yoghurt dip.