I used the recipe from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” (which is awesome, btw).
The taste was great, but the texture left a little to be desired. They kept falling apart into crumbly bits during the frying process. Anyone else had this issue?
Was the mix too wet? too dry? Not mixed enough?
For the record, the accompanying hummous & tabboleh were fantastic as well!
I use exactly that recipe, and I love it. It’s all about getting the right consistency of the mixture, and the right moisture content. A smoother mix and more moisture will help them hold together better, in my experience, but the resulting falafel is a bit too dense for my taste. I tend to keep the mix fairly coarse, and I’m willing to sacrifice some structural stability for that 
The smoother mix did seem to make a difference. I thought that it should have distinct chunks of chickpea, but I think I under-processed it first. I ended up returning it to the food processor and re-blending it (after I had already carefully washed & dried everything - of course!).
The second go-round seemed to be just the ticket.
Yay for falafel!
Add a bit of garbonzo flour to the mix. Its available in most international markets as “gram flour”
mmmmm falafel
Or “besan”