Homemade Pitas with Heba's Falafel

These were homemade pitas with Heba's falafel.

We bought the commercial falafel at a middle eastern grocery store in VA without any expectations. They were frozen. I defrost them overnight in the refrigerator and baked them in toaster-oven about 20 mints.

The falafel came with a small cup of tahini sauce. I made my own tahini sauce with Lebanese tahini sesame paste, lemon juice, salt and water according to a recipe from one of my favorite cooking books, Jerusalem.

I won't forget adding fresh vegetable in our pitas - mixture of fresh cucumber, tomato and parsley seasoned with fresh lemon juice.

Here are pitas! I made six pitas. Everyone successfully ballooned! 

Half a pita, open a pocket, spread tahini sauce, snuggle two falafel in the pocket, fill vegetable mix in any space around the falafel and sprinkle a couple of pinches of za'tar over the pocket. 

The falafel was much better than we expected! The texture was amazing. It was so light like a sponge cake. The taste was nice too. Very delicate. If this was what a real falafel was supposed to be, I would had had a wrong idea of falafel until now. Ingredients of the falafel were pretty simple: chick peas, fava beans, parsley, onions, garlic, spices, wheat flour, sesme seeds, salt and canola oil. I wonder if I can recreate them by myself although I usually avoid any deep-fry cooking. We liked the combination of falafel and tahini sauce. I usually make tzatziki sauce for falafel pita sandwich while creamy tahini was a nice change. We should pick up the falafel more when we visited the grocery store next time, or I may try to make some?