Chickpea Cutlets & Middle Eastern food

I made the famous chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon yesterday, baked. They were good, and I was most impressed by how fast and hassle-free they were to assemble.

Today I had a flop and a mid-range success. The flop was falafel. I had two recipes, one from the food memoir "The Language of Baklava," and another in VWAV. I decided to try the first today, and the latter another day. It seemed simple enough: mix everything together, let the mixture sit in the fridge for awhile, form into little patties and then fry those babies up. Sadly, it was not to be. The batter didn't want to be formed into patties and kept breaking up, so I made them smaller and figured it would be okay. It wasn't: two minutes into the frying and they completely disintegrated! I tasted some of the broken-up crumbs rescued from the hot oil, and the flavor was right on, but they were nothing more than crumbs. Big disappointment. However, I need to point out the other recipes I've tried from "The Language of Baklava have been really successful.

Luckily I'd also made mujaddara, which is a cousin of an Egyptian dish called koshari. I'd never heard of mujaddara until a few days ago. It's a fried onion, rice and lentil mix with a little bit of spices thrown in. Pretty simple. Also from "Language of Baklava," but recipes abound on the internet.

Veganomicon's "mediterranean-style cashew-cucumber dip," which is the vegan version of the Greek yogurt dip tzatziki, was supposed to accompany the falafel, but in their absence I put a little on the mujaddara. I was really impressed with this dip, mostly for even trying to recreate it. And it was not bad at all.