Falafel from soaked raw chickpeas, with tahini sauce

Soak dried chickpeas overnight at room temperature in enough water to let them triple in volume. Do not use canned or cooked chickpeas: their starch is already cooked and will not bind.

Pick, wash and spin dry the parsley, cilantro and mint; spin the soaked chickpeas dry too (or dry them on a paper-towel-lined tray).

Put the herbs and chickpeas in the food processor with the ground cumin and coriander seed and a big pinch of salt.

Pulse, scraping down the sides a couple of times. Add smashed garlic.

Grind until it is the texture of a wet meal that just barely holds together when squeezed.

Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate about 15 minutes so released starch makes it easier to form.

For the tahini sauce, blend most of a head of garlic, skins on, with the juice of a couple of lemons and about a teaspoon of cumin seeds, starting slow and increasing speed; add a little water if it is too tight to flow.

Push through a fine mesh strainer with a spatula, leaving the garlic skins, unground cumin and lemon seeds behind.

Add about a cup of tahini; it seizes. Whisk in water a few tablespoons at a time until it smooths out and falls off the whisk in ribbons that slowly flatten. Season with salt.

Gently form the falafel mixture a heaping tablespoon at a time into small balls without rolling them in the hands.

Heat about three quarters of an inch to an inch of oil to around 400 degrees and carefully drop the balls in. Do not move them for the first minute or so, until the crust sets.

The oil drops to around 300 or lower; adjust the flame to hold about 300 to 350, not below 250 to 275. Fry about four minutes total, flipping once with a fork, until crispy.

Variation: add a couple ounces of pitted black olives in the food processor, a tablespoon or two of harissa paste, or zaatar; one herb alone, parsley or cilantro, also works.

Drain on a couple of paper towels on a plate. Serve on tahini sauce.