Spicy Falafel Wraps

The Pantry Door household is an extremely carnivorous one I am not ashamed to say, and meat usually features somewhere in our evening meal. On the odd occasion that I make a vegetarian dish, I tend to get the response "it's nice - but it's missing something..." To this day, this is the only dish I have made that managed to satiate the desire for meat so much so that for a while, we even forgot that we hadn't eaten any. 

Falafel

Ever since following Paul Hollywood's 'Bread' series and pushing myself to make my own breads I haven't bought tortilla wraps, as they are so quick and easy to make at home, and taste soooo much better. The recipe given below is adapted from Paul's, as I have tweaked it to suit our tastes. 

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the falafel;

1 small onion
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 400g tin chickpeas
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
1 tsp chilli flakes
2 egg yolks
a little flour

For the wraps;

125 grams strong white bread flour
125 grams strong wholemeal flour (plus extra for dusting)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried fast-action yeast
2 teaspoons golden caster sugar
20 grams salted butter
160 ml tepid water
a little vegetable oil

Additional ingredients;

1 block Halloumi cheese
1 red pepper
Assorted salad leaves
Houmous

Layered Up! Houmous, Salad, Halloumi and Falafel ready to be wrapped!

Method

Firstly, prepare the falafel. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Finely chop the onion, and shallow fry in the oil, adding the tablespoon of caster sugar, and cook until the onions start to caramelise and brown. Remove from the heat, and transfer the onions to a sheet of kitchen towel to drain the excess oil. Drain the tinned chickpeas. Blitz the chickpeas quickly in a food processor, you want them to be chopped roughly, not puréed. In a large mixing bowl, mix the chopped chickpeas, onions, spices and egg yolks together well. Take a spoonful of the mixture, form into a ball, and roll in flour. Place the ball onto a tray, and repeat until all of the mixture has been used. Place the tray of falafel balls in the fridge for at least 2 hours. 

Next, make the wraps. Sift the flours into a large bowl, and add the yeast, salt and sugar, making sure the yeast and salt don't come into direct contact. Add the butter, and rub into the flour. Add the water a third at a time, and mix well until the dough comes together. Knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth and elastic, then return the bowl, cover with clingfilm, and leave for an hour to double in size. 

Once the dough has risen, turn out onto the work surface and knock back. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces. Heat a little vegetable oil in a frying pan. Take one of the pieces of dough, and roll out on a floured surface until 1-2mm thick. Transfer the thinly rolled dough to the frying pan, and cook for around a minute on each side. Repeat with the remaining 7 pieces of dough. 

Finally, prepare the components for the dish. Deep-fry the falafel balls for around 3-4 minutes until golden brown. Slice the halloumi cheese, and grill until golden. Slice the red pepper and prepare the salad leaves. 

Grilled Halloumi Cheese

Serve all the components, so the wraps can be assembled at the table. Layer up the houmous, red pepper, salad leaves, grilled halloumi and falafel pieces into the wraps, roll up, and dig in! 

I'm linking this recipe up to Alphabakes, hosted by Caroline Makes and The More Than Occasional Baker, as this month's letter is F for Falafel! 

I'm also linking in to Made with Love Mondays hosted by Javelin Warrior as everything is made from scratch.

Flour Tortilla Wraps and Episode Two of 'Bread'

I'm going to start this post light of heart, as I am really enjoying my bread-making journey, and can feel my confidence growing more and more with every successful bake. So much so in fact, that I even went 'off-piste' from my self set syllabus this weekend and made pizza dough from scratch. I was particularly looking forward to this week's episode of 'Bread' featuring Paul Hollywood, as the theme was 'flat-breads', something that we consume a lot of in our house, but it had never occurred to me that they could be made at home... yes, I am a little slow on the uptake sometimes!

Paul took us around the world in this episode, giving us Cyprian Pitta breads, a Middle-Eastern Maneesh bread, and Mexican Corn Tortillas. As with the first episode, he evolved each of these bakes into a full on meal, each one oozing spices and flavours enough to have you slathering at the TV screen. As with the first episode, Paul demonstrated his bakes with a simple manner and a fistful of passion, that makes the show both easy watching, and yet very informative. I am enjoying this side of the 'silver fox', I find him much more sincere when he is baking alone, than when he is bantering and jesting with Mary Berry, and for me, because I am trying to learn here, I'm finding it a lot more accessible.

Gary and I watched the episode together, and at the end I asked him which of the breads from this week I should attempt as the next stage in my 'bread-ucation' (oh yes, I'm trade-marking that phrase right now!). We agreed upon the Corn Tortillas, from Gary's point, because he wanted to eat the Tortilla Stack that Paul made with the finished product, from my point, because it looked like the easiest of the three bakes to try first!

Here is where I hit my first stumbling block. The recipe calls for Masa Harina, a Mexican maize flour. I had no real expectation that I would find this in my local supermarket, however Paul's notes in the book said that you can substitute this for wheat flour. Now I'm not an expert in anything bread-related, and I'm not ashamed to admit I searched the supermarket shelves for 'wheat flour', and when nothing had such a title written on it, I went home, dejected.

I re-consulted the book, and decided to make flour wraps instead, and convert the stack idea into more conventional Fajitas. I have since realised, through research, and having a slightly calmer frame of mind, that all flour is made of wheat - duh, and that I should have been able to use a white or wholemeal flour to make the Corn Tortilla recipe.

Never-the-less. I had pressed on with my wraps, and tried to rectify the mistakes that I had made previously with my Bloomer. I weighed out the salt, sugar, butter and yeast first, so as not to get an overly salted bread like before. I practised my more aggressive kneading techniques, and placed my dough in it's 'warm place' to prove.

When I went back to my dough an hour and a half later as instructed in the recipe, I was alarmed to see that it had barely moved. The recipe did say that it didn't need to rise very much, but not at all!?!? Despite my panic, I soldiered on, mostly because we had nothing else for tea, but also because I needed to see how things turned out. I divided my dough, and rolled out the first circle. I quite quickly got into a motion of placing one wrap in the pan, rolling out the next, flipping the first and so on. They take literally moments to brown, and then it's onto the next.

I served our wraps with some lightly spiced chicken, and a selection of salsa, sour cream, guacamole and cheese. OH MY GOODNESS! These wraps were incredible! Still warm, soft and floury, they had a taste like nothing I'd ever experienced in shop-bought vacuum-packed wraps. I am NEVER buying them ever again!

I'm not going to post the recipe, as it's from Paul's new book, however the link for the recipe from the episode for Corn Tortillas is here. Roll on next week, and the next stage in my 'Bread-ucation'!!!!