At Home Falafel-like Sandwich

 

Hi everyone – I hope you are having a lovely Friday. Today I wanted to talk about falafel/felafel. Last week I had the worst falafel craving.  A Maoz recently opened in my neighborhood, and I loved their falafel when I lived in New York. It did not even occur to me to check if they had gluten-free options (plus falafel is fried, and I stay away from fried foods), so instead, I schemed a falafel with loads of topping at home.

And I schemed well.  in the picture above, hiding under all the toppings, are Ricki’s Veggie Burgers from Diet Dessert and Dogs (with additional cumin and chickpea flour instead of pumpkin seeds – I made the full sized patties but then split them in half for the sandwich), but this quick falafel-like interpretation is all hidden under the mountains of lovely toppings, which include roasted zucchini, roasted eggplant, roasted green peppers, peppery arugula, hummus (using my standby recipe), an additional smidge of tahini and lemon juice, lots of peppery arugula and Kristen’s Raw Tuscan Sun-dried Tomato Pesto. I discovered the recipe through Tasha the Voracious Vegan, who raved about it a few months ago, right when there was no local basil here in Washington. I swore the second I found basil at the Dupont Market, I would be making this recipe, and it so did not disappoint.  It’s the perfect additional topping for falafel. It is lemony and tomatoey and fragrant.

For bread, I went the easy route, using a Food for Life Brown Rice Gluten-Free Tortillas, though had I had more time and inclination, I might have made Meghan Telpner’s  Protein Power Flatbread, which I love, or maybe looked for another gluten-free flatbread recipe, but honestly, as I was making all the toppings, I just wanted to assemble my sandwich and eat.  I just knew it would be one lovely mountain of deliciousness and I like the Food for Life tortillas, so why wait any long.  I mean, can you blame me? Just look at the close-up:

I tried to take a picture of it folded up,  but the picture did not do the deliciousness justice.

The funniest part of this whole at-home falafel scheme is that the third day I made this sandwich, it occurred to me to check Maoz’s webpage, and look what I saw:

 I will have to go investigate what the ingredients in this gluten-free falafel are and whether they have their own dedicated preparation area at some point. In the meantime, my homemade falafel was complex and satisfying and totally hit the spot.