- You guys are not even ready, not even ready for this.
Sometimes I just like, blow myself away.
Sorry, just saying.
Hey guys, welcome to my home.
We are in my kitchen.
I hope you are all doing amazing out there
in quarantine land.
Today, I'm going to receive a
video challenge from my producers.
I'm going to create something awesome, hopefully.
I might have the ingredients,
I might not, have no idea what I'm going to make.
But I'm going to soon find out,
so I'm gonna jump on this call
and see what we're going to make today.
(phone beeps)
- And we're live, are you nervous?
I've got another challenge for you today.
- You know what McGraw, how do I say?
Maybe not nervous, more excited about potentially overcoming
any challenges that might arise.
- I'll give you a few hints.
Think Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, deep fried.
- Deep fried, Mediterranean and delicious.
- Absolutely, potentially in a ball like shape.
- Falafel.
- Ah, there you go.
- (laughs) Cauliflower falafel.
Wow, that sounds amazing.
- That was the only thing I could get you.
So there were no chickpeas.
- So we're going to substitute cauliflower for chickpeas.
Hmm, I'm actually really excited to make this.
- Good luck.
- Thanks.
(laughing)
Alright, so what's this recipe?
The ol' falafel sans chickpeas,
this one uses beans and almond meal.
That's nice to kind of give it that texture.
And I don't have almonds to make almond meal.
But I have walnuts.
So cauliflower has a lot more water content
than if I was using soaked chickpeas.
And I'm gonna have to find a way to dry out the mixture a
little bit so it doesn't become dense.
So a chickpea-less falafel.
Can you taste it?
I'm going to roast my garlic first, roasted garlic.
I'm going to cut the little top off.
I don't need a ton.
This garlic is going to be for the
roasted garlic tahini sauce, olive oil and some salt.
A little bit of water.
And put a little bit of water on the tray to help steam.
Lets go, see you later.
You know what else we need to do?
We need to bake our walnuts, make some walnut meal
and hope for the best.
Take this to the oven.
Bye, garlic is in, do a little check-a-roo.
Pita bread, this is my friend Gabriel's recipe,
best apple cider vinegar ever.
Sugar, yeast, flour, fancy, take all of the dry ingredients.
Four cups of flour, (laughs) there's our timer.
The yeast gives it a really great flavor
and gives it this sort of spongy texture, salt,
Sifty, sifty, the end.
We're going to get the standing mixer, this thing's heavy.
So mixing all the liquid, neutral oil, a tablespoon.
Now, the fun part.
Alright, so we need to mix for seven minutes.
So while that mixes I'm gonna gather the ingredients
for my falafel.
These look amazing.
Good job six minutes,
we toasted our walnuts and then we're going to pulse them.
Not actually sure this is gonna work,
but I have a good feeling it will.
Pulse, pulse.
(grinding)
Oh my God, smells amazing.
That's gonna give it such a nice texture.
We have walnut meal, the walnuts are great
because they're a little bit drier.
I wonder if I can do the same thing
with the cauliflower in here.
(grinding)
We have walnut meal and couscous.
Great, so this technique seems to work really well
and there's a good amount of moisture coming out already.
So I'm going to pulse down the rest of the cauliflower
and then squeeze out all of the liquid.
And I think that's gonna give me
a really similar texture to chickpeas.
(grinding)
Salt's gonna help sort of draw the water out.
It's gonna be my workout for the day.
So I don't want a lot of water in the falafel
because what's going to happen is it's gonna be too gummy,
and I really want it to be light and fluffy.
You totally up to us elbow grease with this,
there's so much water in it.
You never would think because when you eat cauliflower.
It's like oh, this is kind of boring.
Nice.
Yeah, so we're gonna let the mixture sit for an hour.
So step one done.
Pita dough, that looks awesome.
Make sure that's all bound together.
Awesome, so this needs to rest for like an hour.
I'm going to open these butter beans
because the recipe I looked at used butter beans,
which I like because I think it's going to give it a little
bit of starchiness and some kind of tender textures.
The beans are going to act like a binder.
So that's what they look like.
And we're gonna just chop them up.
Okay, not too mushy.
Trying to remember what's next, garlic, too cloves.
Garlic is gonna go in the cauliflower.
Feel like these beans would love some olive oil.
They're just looking at me like,
we're not delicious. Dry ingredients.
I think it needs to be like three parts cauliflower
to one part flour, baking powder.
Cool.
We need cayenne pepper, not for spiciness,
just really depth of flavor, a little bit of cumin,
little black pepper, and lots of herbs,
parsley, cilantro, a little bit of thyme, why not.
And some spinach.
I'm always kind of trying to find ways
to add vegetables to things that I cook.
I think it's also just going to give it
a really nice light airy texture.
I have this awesome flowering thyme.
Parsley, and last but not least some cilantro.
Okay, approaching the finish line.
We have walnut meal, butter bean, dry ingredients,
the star of the show, the cauliflower
and all of the delicious flavorings!
If I want some like, background lemon flavor,
I just want to add the zest to the mixture itself.
I just want to whip a little, like maybe two egg whites.
(whipping)
Let's check on our pita dough.
Oh yeah, this is looking amazing!
Really making stuff here.
I'm going to mix this walnut meal
and this= cauliflower together.
Just add these herbs.
Oh you know what?
We should probably turn on the oil
so we can test one out.
We have our semi-moist ingredients.
Let's add some beans.
Do I want to do that?
Ah, no turning back.
Gentle, gentle, it should have like some hold to it.
Let's taste it.
Oh my God!
I freaking love my job so much.
I swear it's just like so magical.
Jeez, wow just tastes bomb.
Okay, I'm going to try one before I add the egg whites.
Oh my God, there's a bee in here.
Hello, buddy, hope its not a murder hornet. (laughs)
All right, there's a tiny falafel ball.
Well it's sticking together.
So the thing about falafel is it always has this really
delicious exterior crunchy craveable texture.
So I really want to achieve that.
This looks amazing.
Hopefully it tastes good.
It's holding together nicely.
I think the starch from the beans
is really kind of binding it,
makes sense why it's in there now.
Needs a little salt.
I think it needs egg white though.
(whipping)
Just like a little bit of protein binder.
87% there (whipping)
Little egg white for volume, zest of lemon.
This looks so delicious.
Smells amazing.
Think I'm just gonna add touch more cayenne pepper,
touch more cumin.
All the flavors are there,
but I really just want to like, amplify it.
I'm gonna shape these and let them cool.
I really want these to all look the same.
So I'm gonna grab a scale.
(scale clanks)
31, alright, so let's call them 30 grams each.
So you can totally just go in and grab it with a scoop.
You know, you don't have to like pull out your fancy digital
scale but, you know, how chefs be all extra.
This is fun.
These are the types of things I think should be on like
competition, like chef competition shows.
Can you eyeball 30 grams? (laughs)
Maybe we'll make one big one, like a falafel burger.
Is that a thing?
Yum, I know what I'm eating for dinner tonight.
Okay, so these need to rest in the refrigerator.
So the garlic's been in for about 45 minutes.
Yes.
Oh yeah.
Tahini dressing, structure in the base of our dressing
is gonna be roasted garlic.
And the gardener's mowing the lawn right now.
So I'm gonna yell.
Just like if you're making any vinaigrette,
you would use like Dijon mustard or egg yolk.
We're using roasted garlic to kind of capture
and bind it or emulsify the fat.
And I want something that's really creamy.
That's gonna stand up against the crunchy texture
of the falafel.
Little bit of cumin, touch of cayenne.
To kind of make it pop.
You know opposite the falafel where we just used the
lemon zest, this is different, we're not cooking this.
We want that bright acidy, really bold lemon juice flavor.
This is an oat milk that I make.
It's gonna allow the oil to emulsify in.
You can use whole milk or goat milk or cow milk
or chicken milk or whatever milk you have.
So good amounts of tahini.
How do I look?
(laughs)
This mount on because,
I want you guys to like get in there.
I need this to be super creamy.
There we go.
Slowly, don't break it.
What an interesting point of vision.
(mixing)
Look at that.
Viscosity is looking great.
Salt, yum.
So if you want it thicker, you just had more oil.
And if you want it thinner, you add more water
or in my case the oat milk.
It's one woman show here (laughs).
Doing it, here we go.
Let's taste this,
you guys are not even ready!
Not even ready for this!
Sometimes I just like, blow myself away, sorry. Just saying.
So sexy, ay, like, sauces are my jam.
I didn't work in a two-star
Michelin restaurant as a saucier a for nothing.
Wow.
Happy. Okay so I've allowed my pita dough to rest.
I think I can do eight out of this recipe
and I'm just going to shape the dough into balls
by using this portion of my hand and press down
and use my pinky to turn the dough.
Such a nice kind of yeasty aroma.
And then what I'm gonna do is actually
cook them in a cast iron pan, as opposed to an oven
because I want them to have this kind of like charred pieces
to them, as opposed to baking them off in the oven
and sort of drying the dough out a little bit.
I want them to puff in the pan.
So the technique that I saw a lot of Israeli chefs doing is
putting them in the pan and then kind of flipping them over
back and forth
almost like you would a tortilla. And what happens is
they kind of puffed up.
Alright, pitas, you take a little break.
I think we should go cut some herbs
to put on our pita.
Chives.
We have the herbs.
Oil should be nice.
And then the temperature of the falafel
will bring down the heat.
So we don't want to crowd the pan too much.
All right, oh, yeah, oh yeah.
Look at that.
I mean never what I thought I'd be
cooking for the two most important beings here.
My two most-appraised critics, Bear and Ginger.
We're going to try one pita and see where we're at.
Let's try this.
All the falafel's out.
I want to season these babies up.
Pita's looking fluffy.
Ooh yes, I'm gonna make this one with some za'atar on it.
Sumac is so killer in there.
Kind of put a little bit of olive oil on it,
a little bit of salt,
and a little bit of za'atar!
Wow.
This one's fluffy.
They look phenomenal, texture's impeccable.
I mean a great falafel is gonna have some,
it's gonna be crunchy on the outside
and then it's going to be soft and fluffy on the inside.
Right when you open it, all you get is like this amazing
whiff of like cumin-y, lemon-zesty, aromatic deliciousness.
The walnuts I'm really happy that I had those and used them.
Walnuts have a really meaty texture to them,
so I get this really beautiful crumb around the outside
and then this really soft delicious center.
(humming)
Wow, so good, I can see that yeast in there did its thing.
Create these natural pockets of air as it feeds
and it creates the bubbles.
I am going to build a pita pocket falafel.
Yum.
Tahini dressing, chili, fresh garden herbs, tomato confit,
slow cooked in oil, feta cheese.
This is so good.
This is so freaking delicious.
I can't even deal.
I mean my personal thoughts are that,
I freaking nailed this recipe. An epiphany to my soul.
I had my doubts about cauliflower falafel.
I'm going to do a falafel burger.
Take this super light, delicious pita, yum.
Oh, this one's perfect.
Yeah, I mean I love good burger, but my waistline
might not always agree with that statement.
That za'atar top, I can't even.
(whistles)
Feta cheese, tomato.
That za'atar on top, straight from Israel.
Honestly, you can't even tell it doesn't
have chickpeas in it.
Lemon zest is key in that, for sure.
So, I think this came out great.
Let me know how I did.
Let me know how you guys do.
I hope you actually make this.
It was super easy.
You saw how quickly that all came together
and how few ingredients it actually took.
I mean, a whole head of cauliflower's may be three bucks,
and we made all of this.
I mean, who's mad at that?
You can feed an entire family.
So that's what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna go share my creation with my neighbors
and I hope that you enjoy.
If you make this, let me know.
Let me know how I did.
Peace out.
(gentle music)