Lebanese Cuisine: 1,000 Sizzling Chickpeas
Everyone knows that the falafel is Egyptian right? But then why are the Israeli´s and Palestinians fighting over it? And what does Lebanon have to do with it?
The truth is that no-one can prove exactly who made the original falafel however it is widely accepted that it hails from Egypt, only that the Egyptian dish was made with fava beans (also called broad beans) and as the falafel migrated north cooks substituted the beans for chickpeas.
Nowadays falafel is a staple dish throughout the Middle East and it´s popularity has spread throughout the world, although Lebanon still holds the record for the largest serving of falafel with a whopping 5,173 kg served by Chef Ramzi Choueiri and the students of Al-Kafaat University in Beirut on 9 May 2010, and the falafel is such an integral part of Lebanese life it´s even the namesake of a film. See the trailer for Falafel, the movie at: http://lebanesefilms.blogspot.com.br/2007/07/falafel.html (only in Arabic).
Throughout Lebanon you can see huge, round, shallow stainless steel pans of oil packed with these tasty, little chickpea balls sizzling away ready to be packed into a falafel sandwich. But the largest serving of falafel is not the only culinary record that Lebanon holds, it is also in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest dish of hummus (a delicious dip made from mashed chickpeas) in the world, made by 300 cooks in the village of al-Fanar, near Beirut and weighing 10,452 kg.