Veg Box: 12/6/12

Another lovely summery veg box!

This week's box had spring onions, cucumber, a salad bag, courgettes, broad beans, new potatoes and some very exciting carrots with their green tops still on. It's a shame it still isn't salad weather! We've had horrible drizzle and murk for ages now.

Nevertheless, I decided to make something summery with some of my veg, and eventually settled on baked falafel, which I had with a yogurty cucumbery raita/tzatziki/dip/sauce thing (just some fat free Greek yogurt with grated cucumber, garlic and salt and pepper).

I based my falafel on this recipe from The Intolerant Gourmet, which I used over the Jubilee weekend with great success, but as usual I just had to change it a bit! I wanted to use some of my veg box produce, so along with the chickpeas I added some of the carrots and broad beans, and as I didn't have any herbs I threw some of the carrot tops in as well for some extra greenery. I got 16 good-sized falafel out of my batch of mixture and I can't wait to have the rest for Thursday's post-haircut (my God do I ever need a haircut...) supper!

Baked carrot and broad bean falafel

100g carrots, chopped
50g broad beans (that's the beans themselves, out of their pods)
5 or 6 spring onions, roughly chopped
Handful of parsley/mint/coriander/carrot tops/whatever leafy herbs you have
400g tin chickpeas, drained
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce or mango chutney
Whatever spices you fancy - cumin, coriander, paprika etc etc
4 tbsp chickpea flour (gram flour)
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Put the carrots, beans and spring onions into a food processor (one of those little ones will do, that's what I have!) and pulse until finely chopped.
3. Add the chickpeas, herbs, garlic, oil, sauce and spices and blitz until smooth (like really chunky houmous).
4. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and add the chickpea flour and seasoning, and mix to form a dough (it will be slightly sticky but you should be able to handle it easily).
5. Line a baking tray with baking paper/greaseproof, then make little 2" patties with the falafel mix and place them on the lined tray.
6. Bake for 30 minutes, turning them over halfway through the cooking time so they brown on both sides.
7. Serve warm or cold - they'd be gorgeous in wraps with a spicy sauce!