Falafel Fail

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I'm missing some falafel gene. Surely, at the very least I'm missing the requisite cultural competence. Those are my falafel's in the picture, but don't let their appearance deceive you -- they look better than they taste. As you can see, I tried to hide my falafel ineptitude with spring greens, tomato and cucumber, but I think that only made things worse. Another failed falafel attempt.

The false promise of tasty falafel.

In addition to what I'm convinced is genetic inadequacy, I think the problem with these falafels is two fold. First, the recipe just wasn't that great -- which is what I get for using some random, not user rated recipe floating around on the Internet. Hopefully that lesson has now been learned. The spice proportions were alright, and these things were drab, close to tasteless. Falafel attempt #1 may have not looked quite right, but they tasted delicious. These were the opposite, they looked better but tasted far worse. Furthemore , falafel professionals undoubtedly know this, but you just cannot bake falafel and have it still be a falafel. Falafel's really must be fried. I tried using the broiler, which resulted in a little bit of browning, but you need to fry them to get the right texture. In a last ditch effort to salvage my dinner, I stuck them in a pan with some vegetable oil. They didn't fall apart as much as last time, but as I mentioned before, they were tasteless, which in my book is much worse.

From the looks of it, you'd expect them to be pretty good ... well, you'd be wrong.

After a few minutes of broiling on both sides, they flattened out a little -- I was just glad they hadn't fallen apart.

The second part of the problem I again attribute to the use of canned versus dried chickpeas. Unless I can find some dried chickepas, there isn't much I can do about that. If I do find the dried variety and my falafels still suck, I'll take it as evidence of the missing falafel gene. I just may have to quiet my next falafel hankering with the crumbly but delicious mess I made last time. At least the lemonade tasted great -- almost good enough to cover up how disappointingly bad these falafels turned out.

At least I know I have no inherent disability when it comes to making lemonade.

Falafel - 2, Me - 0.

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What's Cookin' - Baked Falafel

Even though my first attempt at making falafel -- a wonderful Middle Eastern (not Greek, as I once erroneously thought) dish of fried spiced chickpeas -- two or three months ago was pretty much an unmitigated disaster in terms of presentation, the mixture of herbs and spices was so delicious that I've been craving it ever since. Unfortunately, my sesame allergy prevents me from procuring falafel at food establishments like most other people. (Much to my boyfriend's dismay, I attempted to get falafel at a restaurant once after making sure there was no sesame in the falafel itself ... but I forgot about the tahnini.) Tonight, I can resist the call of the falafel no longer and am going to give it another go.

Homemade falafels take #1, though yummy tasting, completely fell apart in the frying pan until it became a mess of brownish green slop nowhere close to even resembling the delicious falafel it aspired to be -- more fal-awful than falafel if you ask me (hardy har har). I attribute the disaster primarily to the use of canned versus dried then soaked chickpeas. I tried to remedy this deficiency for future falafel frying at my local Trader Joe's, but they only carry the canned type. (On a somewhat related note, they also don't carry arborio rice, which surprised me, TJ's being the precisely the type of place where yuppie, arborio-cooking types such as myself wouuld shop.) Not wanting to brave the alleged general unpleasantness of Berkeley Bowl (seriously, read the reviews on Yelp, it sounds like an acute version of foodie hell) or the prices at Whole Foods, I'm going to have to stick with the canned chickpeas. In order to avoid the previous sopping disaster, for homemade falafels take #2, I'm going to try baking them instead. I'll be using this recipe gleaned from the interwebs and will let you know how it goes and maybe even provide pictures. We'll see.

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What's Cookin' - Yellow Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

Today I'm saying goodbye to boxed yellow cupcake mix and attempting to make them from scratch. I've got a birthday party tonight for a friend who I don't know well enough to feel obligated to give a present, but I hate going to any kind of fete empty handed. The birthday girl requested yellow cupcakes with vanilla frosting and that's what she's going to get -- unless, of course, something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

I'll be using this recipe for yellow cupcakes from the Food Network and this recipe gleaned from Allrecipes.com to top it off. Judging from the comment threads, it looks like there have been issues with overbaking the cupcakes and not-so-stiff frosting. The solution to the latter problem seems to be warming up the cream cheese on the counter instead of the microwave. I made a recipe for pineapple cupcakes with tropical cream frosting earlier this week that also called for cream and posed some stiffening issues. I suspect this was because I microwaved the cream cheese to soften it. So this time around, I'll let the cream cheese sit out on the counter top for a bit and also chill my bowl and beaters to make sure it whips up nicely.

Update: Well, something did go horribly, horribly wrong. Just as I had feared, the frosting did not set up like it was supposed to. Frosting has officially become my least favorite kitchen task. Ever. I have no idea what went wrong, though I suspect I overworked it. The frosting-to-be had reached a somewhat acceptable consistency (I should mention that this was the second batch, the first one, I don't even know what happened there), but I pushed it and decided to keep whipping, and the whole thing relaxed. I was able to frost the cupcakes with it, but it was nowhere close to the heaping fluffiness I was hoping for. Frosting disaster aside, the cupcakes were a big hit at the party, so I'm not a complete failure.

A few comments on the cupcake recipe. First of all, it is definitely a recipe designed for a stand up mixer. My arms were dying after all the mixing this required. But all of the hard work really does pay off. These are truly delicious, ultra airy, not-to-sweet, gourmet cupcakes, probably the best I've ever made. You get out what you put in, I guess. I'm perfectly happy to stick with quicker recipes for everyday baking, but for special occasions or really special people that I like, this is a go to recipe.

Sorry, no pictures. I was too in a hurry to get out the door after the whole frosting debacle.

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What's Cookin' - Chickpea and Potato Curry

I didn't take any time jumping on my summer goals list by trying a new curry recipe. I was also really hungry and have been nursing a curry craving for a good week. Potatoes and chickpeas are two of my favorite curry ingredients and I happened to have a can of chickpeas in the pantry and a bunch of old potatoes on the verge of sprouting into new potatoes. A quick Google search turned up this recipe.

As was the case with my past forays into cooking curry, this curry turn out spicey but otherwise bland. I didn't add the optional chili since I'm not all that found of super spicey foods -- I like being able to eat something without feeling like my mouth is on fire, I just don't understand what enjoyment there is to be had eating things that make your eyes water. I'm beginning to wonder if the spicey blandness is a result of the curry powder I'm using. Perhaps it's no longer good or wasn't very good in the first place? Either way, I just threw on some extra salt, warmed up some naan I happened to have in the refrigerator and enjoyed my meal while watching the Mariner's miraculously dominate the Angels.

And in keeping with my summer goals list, I'm about to sit down to "Delicatessen." Not a bad night.

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Constructive Summer

My internship ended yesterday and the sun is shining, so I'm declaring that summer (aka watermelon time) is unofficially here. (In case you're wondering, summer starts officially on June 21.) I have 3.5 months, give or take a few weeks, before I surrender my life to law school and I'll be damned if I don't make the most of it. To reference the Hold Steady, I'm going to build something this summer.

By build, I mean do lots of things. And to keep me honest and motivated, I decided to make it a blogging project as well. I've drafted a list of goals for the next few months and you can follow my progress as I try to keep up with them.

10 Summer Goals for a Constructive Summer:

1. Read a Book for an Hour Every Day - I have a TON of unread books on my shelf and I also don't read nearly enough for someone who allegedly loves books. Also, I need to preemptively make up for all the leisure reading I won't be doing once I start law school ~cries~.
2. Study Tagalog for an Hour Every Day - I shelled out $300 for the Rosetta Stone program a year ago and haven't really taken advantage of it. Learning Tagalog has been long been a goal of mine, so I should really stop procrastinating and just do it already.
3. Study for the GREs for an Hour Every Day - I may be applying for a concurrent degree in Public Policy, which means I have to take the GREs (blergh -- but there's no way it's going to kick my ass as bad as the LSATs did). I already ordered study material, so as soon as they get here, I'll get started.
4. Exercise 6 Days a Week - I've already been sticking to my Barry's Bootcamp workout video pretty consistently for the past month and a half or so, so I have high hopes of keeping this up. Yes, I use a workout video and it fucking rocks.
5. Cook Two New Recipes a Week - I want to expand my cooking and baking repertoire and I figure the best way to do this is by trying new recipes. Also, I recently discovered The Kitchn and an assortment of other cooking and baking blogs that are sure to keep me busy.
6. Watch Two Movies a Week - The utilization of my Netflix account is really pathetic. I once had a movie for a good month or so before I watched it. At the same time, my Netflix queue only continues to grow. I like watching movies, so this is really a matter of will rather than interests.
7. Dance Twice a Week - I've been meaning to dance more consistently for a while since that's really the only way to improve. With dance classes and semi-frequent dance dates with a friend, I already have infrastructure for this. I'm hoping to leap into Level 3 at Fat Chance Belly Dance whenever the cycle starts over.
8. Listen to One Album from the RS500 Every Week - For my music blog, I launched a project to blog the top 250 of the RS500. Surprise, surprise, I haven't started yet. But this is a constructive summer, so now would be a good time to start.
9. Develop Photographs Once a Week - I actually don't know how reasonable this goal is, it might end up needing to be every other week. I've been meaning to get back into black and white photography and developing my own photos. I commandeered my dad's beautiful 35 mm and paid for unlimited summer access to a local darkroom. Also, I ordered a decent scanner so I can post the images online.
   
10. Host More Parties - I don't have friends over nearly enough. I'm a big fan of theme parties, which are a good excuse to have people over. This also ties into trying new recipes since I don't like to bake things unless I have people to pawn the baked goods off on lest I undermine my 6 days of exercising and -- self control be damned -- I consume the entire batch. I think a party every other week is reasonable and doable.

I hope to blog about all of these things frequently over the next few months, with the exception of my exercising goal -- I will spare you the completely uninteresting anxious fretting over my self image. Feel free to chime in with ideas, comments and your own goals for the summer.

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