If you’re vegetarian / vegan and you haven’t tried these, you are in for a TREAT. They are like a mash-up between falafel and onion bhajis and taste better than both. They can be eaten like falafel, in a wrap or whatever but the BEST way to eat them (like many of the recipes I share) is mashed into fresh white rice with your fingers.

IMPORTANT! READ THIS BEFORE TRYING THIS RECIPE: The recipe below involves deep frying and you need to know what you’re doing – don’t try to make the falafel-like balls if you’re not confident using extremely hot oil. Also, there is a danger that if you’ve not quite got the mixture correct in terms of its “wetness”, the balls will fall apart in the hot oil and you’ll be left with a mess and waste a lot of oil. If you’re not feeling confident about this, I suggest you make patties and shallow fry them – they will taste just as good. Note also that you’ll need to soak the lentils for at least 4 hours, then chill them for about an hour before you want to cook them. You’ll also need a food processor.

If you like this sort of food, I’ve written up my favourite veggie / vegan recipes in this booklet you can download:

Ingredients (this will make 20 – 30, plenty for 4-6 people. Just halve the amounts if you want less):

500 g of split red lentils

1 large onion / 2 medium onions, finely diced (and I mean finely).

2 – 4 green finger chillies, sliced into fine segments (optional)

Large handful of fresh coriander, chopped.

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon salt (or however much you want)

Enough vegetable oil for deep-frying (your saucepan shouldn’t be more than 1/2 full of oil).

Method:

Wash / rinse the lentils thoroughly to get rid of dirt then soak them in lots of water in a large bowl for at least 4 hours. 6 is good.

Drain the soaked lentils (which should have puffed up considerably). Put them into a food processor and add the turmeric and salt. Blitz to a paste. (Once you’re good at making these, you can experiment with leaving the texture a bit more grainy, but if it’s your first go, I suggest you go with as smooth a paste as you can make, as in the photos below),

Thoroughly mix in the chopped onions, chillies and fresh coriander.

Chill this mixture in the fridge for an hour or so – this will cause any unwanted water to drain to the bottom and make it easier to roll the mixture into balls.

Heat oil to 170 degrees celsius. Use an appropriate thermometer if you have one.

If you don’t want to deep-fry, you can make the mixture into flat patties and shallow fry.

Make one small (one inch diameter) balls with the lentil mixture. Drop this carefully into the hot oil and fry for about 5 minutes, making sure it doesn’t burn. If it looks like the ball is not holding together, remove from the oil as quickly as possible and see the note below about what to do next.

Take the ball out of the fryer, let it cool down and taste it. Add more salt and chilli to the mixture if it needs it and fry some more balls.

NOTE: if your ball disintegrates when you put it into the oil, something has gone horribly wrong and you should probably give up because your oil will be ruined. If the oil is salvageable, you can try adding some (chickpea) flour to your mixture to help it bind together better but this will detract from the deliciousness of the fritters if you have managed to get them right first time.

Expert tip: If, instead of balls, you just drop small chunks of the batter into the oil, you can get a slightly different, crunchier snack. If you don’t want to deep-fry, you can make the mixture into flat patties and shallow fry.