Chickpea Tuesday

I had a lot of bad feelings about chick pea, previously. I love falafel, I love hummus, I love the taste, the texture, so I obviously thought, this must be a "no-way-to-eat.it" food. It was just too good to be true. You know the saying, everything that is good in life is either fattening or obscene. I thought it to be soo good, that it must be fattening.

Up until recently, I did not know that I can actually eat it.With no guilt, whatsoever. Moreover, I can eat it with no real portion control.
This is amazingly good news for me, and yesterday I enjoyed preparing chick peas to the fullest.

I had a huge bowl of dry chick peas soaked overnight, so it was the perfect way to start it.

I prepared two thing - pretty obvious - huh?
Hummus and falafel balls.

I skimmed through a lot of hummus recipes, and falafel recipes on the internet, then I somehow just mixed and matched them, until I made my own eyeball-portion version of it, to make a low sodium, oil free version of both, and the results were just amazing.

Hummus

250 g dry chick peas (soaked overnight, cooked to tender)
3-4 cloves of garlic
80g of tahini
juice of 1 lime
half a bunch of cilantro - chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
some of the cooking water, to thin

Preparation: put all ingredients to the blender, starting with the chick peas, blending them, until creamy, then add the lime juice, tahini, garlic, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper. Thin it until it's supercreamy and yummy.
Then just adjust tastes to your liking, I prefer it with a lots of lime, but the rest of the family wants it sweeter, so I make compromises... We have eaten it with steamed broccoli and cucumber slices, but carrots, whole wheat tortilla chips or any other snacks would just go with it finely.

Falafel

250g dry chick peas, (soaked overnight, cooked to tender)
1 onion, grated
2-3 cloves of garlic, garted
1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
1 tablespoon of cumin seeds
half cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 ts salt
1/4 ts black pepper
1 ts juice of lemon

Preparation: put the chick peas into the blender / food processor and process it until it is coarsely chopped. Add the grated onion and garlic. On medium heat start to toast the coriander and cumin seeds until it is fragrant, than take out quickly, so it should not burn. Crush it and add to the chick peas. Add the cilantro, salt, pepper and lemon juice and form walnut size balls of it.
In the non oil-free version I would fry them in super-hot oil, but to have it oil-free, I have put them on lightly oil sprinkled baking sheet and baked for 30 min on medium-high heat.

We put it into a whole wheat tortilla with hummus, lots of salad and it disappears just immediately.

Any other cool tips on how to make hummus or falafel?