Falafel and Tzatziki

Last night I had another interesting request, falafel.  I do realize how lucky I am to have a husband who wants to try things other than meat and potatoes and will eat pretty much anything I put in front of him.  This was super easy but how I made it turned out to not be as low cal as I normally like. There were two things I did that I probably should have thought about before eating. Sometimes I forget to count calories until after I've already eaten, not quite as effective that way.  First, I pan fried the patties the whole time, I probably could have seared the outside to get a good crisp then baked them on a rack to heat them through.  Second, those pita pockets were deceptively high in calories, each one was 160 calories so even though we needed 2 pockets worth of falafel, we didn’t really need to pita pockets.

Falafel

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

1 tbs flat leaf parsley

1 small onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp ground cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil

4 whole wheat pita pockets

Add everything but the oil to a food processor and pulse until the beans and onions are a course meal.  Form the mixture into 10 patties.  If it’s not sticking add a little water.  Heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a skillet to medium heat.  Pan fry the patties and turn so both sides are browned and crispy.  Remove the patties from the skillet to drain on a plate with paper towels. 

Tzatziki

¾ cup Greek yogurt

½ cucumber, diced

1 tsp lemon juice

1 clove garlic, minced

Salt to taste

You need your food processor again.  Add everything to the food processor and pulse until the cucumber is no longer chunky.

And that’s it, super simple.  I was a little rushed last night so this was all I did, but if you have a little bit of extra time, to make the tzatziki better you can put the yogurt in a cheese cloth or non-terry cloth kitchen towel and drain out the water.  There is most likely a few different things in your kitchen you could use to do this.  You could use a colander over a bowl or one of those big strainers set over a bowl. 

Serves 2, for the falafel, pita pockets and tzatziki it was 750 calories and 21 g fat.  One pita pocket and less olive oil would have helped a lot.

With this I had a salad with mixed greens, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, and a balsamic vinegar/olive oil dressing.