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Try these pumpkin falafels from Honey & Co, and serve them along with our wholemeal pitta pockets, red cabbage and orange salad and cashew sauce. Also check out our vegan dinner party ideas.

Looking for more pumpkin recipes? Check out our pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie and pumpkin risotto plus plenty more.

Recipe tip: You must prepare these at least eight hours in advance by soaking the dry chickpeas in a large bowl with lots of water (it needs to be at least four times the volume of the chickpeas) at room temperature – tinned chickpeas won’t work. The end weight should be double the original, so 250g of chickpeas should weigh 500g after soaking.

If at first the water goes murky, drain the chickpeas and cover with fresh water. Once soaked, lift them out of the water into a bowl using a slotted spoon, rather than tipping them into a strainer. This way, you leave the impurities in the water rather than tipping them back onto the chickpeas.

You can use a rough meat grinder attachment or food processor to mince everything together – we favour the meat grinder as it allows for an even mass, but if you use the pulse function on a food processor, it will work well, too. We use gram flour, that’s really easy to come by – it makes the recipe gluten-free but plain flour works, too. Read our guide on what is gram flour and where to buy it for tips on where to find this ingredient.

Ingredients

  • 250g dried chickpeas, soaked for eight hours at room temperature and drained (see above)
  • 300g pumpkin, peeled and diced
  • 300g onions, diced
  • 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tbsp ras el hanout (or use a mixture of ground cumin and ground coriander)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 5-9 tbsp gram flour or plain flour
  • vegetable oil, for frying

Method

  • STEP 1

    Using the coarse blade on a meat grinder or a food processor, grind or pulse the drained chickpeas, pumpkin and onions to a rough breadcrumb texture – it should be quite chunky and not too smooth. Tip into a large bowl with the spices, baking powder, flour and 1 tsp of salt. Mix well to combine into a paste. Squeeze a little of the mixture into a ball in your palm – it should hold its shape well. The mixture will keep in the fridge for up to 48 hours.

  • STEP 2

    Fill a medium pan no more than a third full with vegetable oil and heat to 170C or until a small piece of bread browns in 30 seconds. Roll the falafel mixture into balls the size of table tennis balls (you should end up with about 26), then carefully lower into the hot oil in batches and fry for 6 minutes until browned and crisp.

  • STEP 3

    Remove the fried falafels to a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain, then serve immediately.

Find more Middle Eastern meze recipes here

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