Baked green peas and sweet potato falafels

Sometimes you get a hankering for falafels and you don't have any in the fridge or freezer. Even worse, you don't have a tin a chickpeas in the pantry. What do do? Quite a few of us have a bag of forgotten green peas in the freezer and I'm one of those who keep the sweet potatoes basket topped up at all times. Green peas and sweet potatoes, how on earth are those going to save the day?

A couple of years ago I found a recipe in the monthly Asda magazine and as I wasn't a fan of chickpeas at the time, I decided to give it a go. To make the trial even more interesting, I tried it when we had a house full of guests and as luck would have it, they went down rather well. We may have called them 'flaffies' as they weren't traditional falafels, even though they sported the traditional seasoning.

Some people are funny about green peas, so my advice is downplay their part in these little gems. You can't actually tell that they are in there, neither by taste nor texture. The green spots in the mixture may give them away, but if you blitz them enough, they will almost become unrecognisable. Saying that, the mixture will be pretty green though.

If you like to get your hands sticky, this is a recipe for you. I suppose you could use tools, but I prefer to hand roll the falafels. As there is no oil in the mixture, it washes off easily.

In my kitchen, pretty much nothing is ever deep fried, not even shallow fried. Should I fry something, there is so little oil in the pan that things tend to stick. If something can be baked in the oven, that's what I'll do. Sometimes the recipe states that the food should be fried and I'll stick it into the oven anyway. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, drat, but at least I know.

Anyway, these falafels are made for baking. Healthy as they can be and tasty as well. Enjoy!

For 11-12 medium sized falafels you need:

4 medium sweet potatoes, cut into 2 cm cubes

300 g frozen green peas, defrosted

1.5 tsp ground coriander

1.5 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp dried or 3 tbsp fresh parsley

2 tsp dried or 3 tbsp fresh coriander

1 finely chopped garlic clove (Ooops, I missed this one today...)

salt & pepper

1. Warm the oven to 200 degrees, while you get the sweet potatoes out. Peel and cube them.

2. Toss the sweet potato cubes in a little olive oil on a baking tray and season with salt. Bake for 25 minutes, until they are soft enough to mash. Once they are done, don't wash the tray. You will need it again and the remnants of the oil will be enough, so leave it as it is.

3. Get the peas out and measure the correct amount, 300 g or 10 ounces.

4. Defrost the peas and pop them into a big bowl. Arm yourself with a stick blender.

5. Blitz the peas and while doing so, consider the dinner guests. Leave chunks if they are ok with peas. Blitz to proper mash if they are funny about the green stuff. It will still be green, but less pea looking, if that helps.

6. By now the sweet potatoes should be ready and soft enough to mash.

7. Add the sweet potato cubes to the bowl and swap kitchen gadgets from a blender to a masher.

8. Mash the sweet potato and mix everything well.

9. Add seasoning. This is when you should add the garlic, which I forgot today.

10. Shape golf ball sized falafels and press them to 1 cm flat patties. Place them onto the tray used to bake the sweet potatoes. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

11. Flip them over and shuffle them around if your oven bakes as unevenly as mine does. Bake for another 10-15 minutes, until they are done. They should be quite firm.

12. Ogle the pea delight for a minute and serve with whatever trimmings you fancy. I opted for a salad, grilled halloumi and hummus. It was lush.