I rarely make disasters but last night I succeeded.

I had cooked up a big batch of chick peas for salads, hummus, whatever.
Then I discovered some tzatziki in the fridge that I hadn't used up
and had some pitas on hand, so thought, "Must make falafels!"

So I did. And the first batch promptly fell completely apart in
the fry oil. I mean, I strained the oil out and ended up with
a pile of tasty brown flavored chick pea crumbs that will go nicely
on top of vegetables or whatever, but it certainly was not falafel!

What the hell went wrong?

Looking at a number or recipes from the web, I see that most call
for some amount of flour to help everything stick together. Some
even tell you to add an egg or two to guarantee that. The recipe I
used didn't call for either, although it did call for some baking
powder, as did most others. I think that was the problem. I ended
up with chick pea - Alka Seltzer tablets, not mini-hockey pucks.

Fortunately, I still had half of the raw falafels, so I brushed
them with oil and baked then in the oven until brown ... ish.
They were not as crispy as oil-fried ones, but still pretty tasty
stuffed in the pitas, with lettuce, tomatoes, and tzatziki.

Live and learn.

--
Silvar Beitel