Versatile Chickpeas Are Your Ticket to an Array of Satisfying Meals, Including These Cakes

These falafel-like chickpea cakes are finished with a beautiful yogurt tahini sauce.

A quick sauce beautifully complements the earthy dish. Beth Fuller/TNS

To produce a facsimile of falafel with much less work, we streamlined the chickpea mixture from our popular falafel recipe. By pulsing chickpeas, aromatics, and spices in a food processor, we easily created a cohesive blend that we shaped into disks and pan-fried.

A quick sauce of yogurt, tahini, lemon, and mint beautifully complemented the earthy cakes. To turn the dish into a complete meal, we added a fresh ribboned-zucchini salad with briny Kalamatas, lemony yogurt, and mint.

Crispy Chickpea Cakes With Zucchini Ribbon Salad and Yogurt-Tahini Sauce

Note: Niçoise olives can be used in place of Kalamata. Use a vegetable peeler or a mandoline to shave the zucchini.