I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself. They came out OK. I am assured by the other people that ate them that they were fine, and tasted like falafel. And except for the first couple of burned ones, they all got ate.

But it wasn't what I wanted, dammit. And so, falafail. Or failafel. It didn't quite measure up to the level of a failafail, at least.

I started with this recipe from the Food Network, modified to suit my needs and situation. First, I made a double batch. Second, I completely failed to note that the recipe calls for the mixture to sit for a few hours in the fridge. I didn't have time for that, and was already committed. So I skipped that part.

And third, the recipe called for deep frying. I don't deep fry. I am not properly equipped for deep frying. I don't have room for an actual deep fryer, and I lack both a suitably large dutch oven and a suitably functional oil thermometer. But I figured I could shallow-fry them in a cast-iron pan. I've done this before, with all kinds of things, and it's just a bit more... fussy.

Well, apparently, this is even more fussy with falafel. They were nigh-black on the outside, still hummussy on the inside, and most of them had a line through the middle because the oil didn't make it quite halfway up them. Or up some of them, because my stove is on a slight incline. I carefully managed them, got them out and drained, then put them in a 300 degree oven for about 20 minutes to try to cook them through.

Served in pita folds with onion, tomato, cucumber, hummus, and sheep's milk feta. As an aside, someone, somewhere, must have a trick for actually getting store-bought pita to fold around a filling without splitting in half. I need to find that trick.

Anyway, it was an interesting experiment, but I think if I'm going to do from-scratch falafel in the future, and it's something I want to do, I'm probably going to need a bit more kitchen infrastructure before I can do it properly.