While I was away last week my husband discovered a new felafel joint had opened not far from where we live in Bristol called Falafel King. Actually they've been around for a while at gigs and other shows and have a stall down on the docks but they now have a posh new takeaway and café in Cotham.It was buzzing when we got down there at lunchtime - justifiably so in terms of the size of the portions. £4.50 will buy you a monster wrap smothered with hummus and topped with lovely light puffy felafel (much, much better than the ones I attempted last year), two different slaws and whatever else you want to add: pickles, sumac and tahini, chilli or sour mango sauce.
But having ordered it what I actually wanted was my husband's foul medames, a super tasty dish of hummus topped with rich, dark earthy fava beans (pictured in the rather murky, blurry picture above)
He knew to order it because he once lived in Cairo where it was his daily lunch - at about 2p a throw. Ironically it's also an Israeli street food, one of the strangest things about the bitter Middle East conflict being that Israelis and Arabs eat very similar dishes. (In Egypt it's known as Ful)
I suspect you'd find a definitive recipe for this ultra-frugal dish in Claudia Roden's superb New Middle Eastern Food which I lent a while ago to my son and realise he hasn't given back or try this version from About.com. Wikipedia also has quite an informative entry. I'll have a go at it myself as soon as I can find the right beans.
Have any of you made foul medames? If so do you have a good recipe to share?
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