Aug. 6th, 2020

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One of my go-to dinners in this era of pandemic has been Not-Quite-Falafel chickpea patties with a mint yogurt sauce that may contain cucumbers diced fine if said cucumbers are available. It's not falafel. It's not tzatziki sauce. It's quick and dirty dinner that I can eat with my hands when I don't want to think.

Here's how:

1/3 cup dried chickpeas. Put in smallish container, cover with 1" of water, put in fridge overnight for dinner the next day.

Drain chickpeas, crush (about 1/4 at a time) in a mortar and pestle or, if you have one, dump them all in the food processor. You want them to be all mashed.

Add some onion, finely diced. How much onion? Some. How much do you like onion? I do probably a heaping tablespoon.

Add some parsely, very finely chopped. I use an ice cube of parsely which I pulverised and froze in my ice cube tray back when it was super cheap at the grocery store. There's a little water in mine (so that it would blend) but that doesn't matter.

Add some cumin and some salt. Do what feels good to you.

Add about two forkfulls of regular-ass white flour. Stir. See if it can be made into patties. (If too wet, add a wee bit more flour. If too dry to hold together, sprinkle a little water over it and try again.) If so, make into three patties of equal size, like hamburgers but thinner than home-made hamburger patties.

In cast-iron skillet, hot up bacon grease (I am not vegan or even pretending to be vegan) enough to cover bottom of pan about 1/4" deep, until hot (water droplets boil immediately but below smoke point), put patties in, fry until brown on one side, flip, fry until brown on other side. "A little brown" is not brown enough for maximum crunch. You want a pretty dark brown, a color that would be offensive if your bread was toasted that brown.

Sauce for dipping, which you make while the patties are frying:

Plain yogurt (either greek or regular), to which you add three or four sprigs of fresh mint that have been chopped to a pulp, salt, and (if you have it) some very finely diced cucumber (Peel it first).

It's not falafel. It's not tzatziki. This is chickpea patties with yogurt dipping sauce. I ain't claiming to be properly ethnic over here. But it's crunchy and good (if you like mint and yogurt and cumin and chickpeas and onions and parsley. And it's fast.

I'd really like some dill in the yogurt sauce but I didn't grow any dill this year. :(

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