God Bless The Chickpea! Two reviews.

As much as I enjoy cooking, I'm always on the lookout for something new and interesting to eat that I can buy from a local shop. This is partly because I'm on the committee of the Bournemouth & Poole Coeliac Support Group, so I like to find new things I can recommend to our members when I produce the newsletter. But it's also because, for me, there are few things more exciting than something new to try.

So just imagine my joy when I came across these little beauties in our local Makro (and yes, there are two missing...*ahem*...:

 

These falafels are just one of the new options on offer from the Great Food Braver With Flavour range, which includes:

• Moroccan Falafel 
• Mediterranean Falafel (pictured) 
• Sweet Potato Pakora
• Original Falafel
• Spinach and Pine Nut Bites

 I decided to try the Mediterranean Falafel, which I paired with the Tesco Finest Slow Roast Tomato Houmous, pictured below.

The falafel can be eaten cold straight from the pack or you can heat them up for 8-10 minutes at 180 degrees C. You can also heat them in the microwave for 2-3 minutes, making them perfect for a working lunch.

I tried them cold first, splitting one open to see the inside, where I could see pleasingly large chunks of chickpea still intact. The immediate flavour is a little spicy, without overpowering the flavour of the other ingredients. The texture is dense and crumbly, which means they fall apart when you chew, but can be a little messy to eat if you don't want to look too greedy by stuffing a while one in your mouth in one go!

But it's when you heat them that they really start to shine. The crumbly nature is reduced and the heat from the spice is brought out, along with the flavour, which really does burst into life on the tongue. Of course, all falafel should have some form of accompaniment, so I dunked them in the houmous, which, if anything, helped bring out the flavour any further. Tomato is a great side for most savoury foods, and this houmous proves the point. I'm sorry to say that the entire pack you see pictured at the top was scoffed down in one go, along with most of the houmous (the remainder of which will last in the fridge for 1 day after opening, so will be used for fresh sliced veg tomorrow).

You can buy Great Food's Braver With Flavour products in Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsburys and Costco, at varying prices (the falafel were £3.99 in Makro but £2.40 in Tesco). For more information, check out their website: Great Food.