Helluva weekend.
Took in a Dodgers game, hit the Getty, and got some stuff done around the house. It was both productive and fun, which is the best kind of weekend.
Sunday afternoon, it’s time to think about dinner. I want to do something a little out of my normal routine.
I’ve been considering doing kebabs for a while. And I don’t remember how the idea got into my head, but I’ve been wanting to do kofta kebabs, specifically. I think I had them in a restaurant at some point in the vague, detail-deficient past. I enjoyed them, and I certainly have no shortage of ground beef.
Kofta kebabs are essentially balls of spiced ground beef or lamb (usually lamb), grilled on a kebab skewer. I want to do them up with a little tzatziki sauce and maybe a little feta. The recipe I’m roughly basing this on is here.
The tzatziki sauce will take the longest by a fair margin, so I start with that. Grate a cucumber, pinch of salt, and let it chill in a bowl for a half hour or so to jettison some of the water in the plant. All that water will mess up the creamy loveliness of the sauce.
Seeded...
...and grated.
On to other things. Beef, grated onion, parsley, and spices go into a bowl, as does a clove of garlic, smashed with a little salt.
Meat properly spiced, I pause to consider. The recipe calls for chilling the beef for a period of time to let the spices mingle, but also, I believe, to firm up the fats so the little kofta balls will stay kofta balls. Time is at a premium for me right now, so I won’t be chilling them very long. I’d like some insurance.
So I break an egg into the meat. That should help bind the meat together. Other recipes call for it, this one doesn’t, but an egg certainly won’t hurt anything.
Right. Meat’s chilling, back to the tzatziki. I drain the cuke, add into the Greek yogurt (which is considerably thicker than common whole milk yogurt, so don’t try to sub straight across), a little salt, extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, another garlic-smashed-with-salt dose, and mint. Into the fridge with it.
Nothing left to do but wait.
"That's the box where Deliciousness lives..."
Thirty minutes later, I’m grilling.
They're like Rockettes.
Thirty five minutes later, I’m done.
I pull the tzatziki, toss out some feta and grill some pita for a few seconds. To the table.
Plating, and we’re golden.
Literally, golden. Check out that magic hour.
Verdict? Not bad. Not a show-stopper by any means, but not a tragedy. And we had plenty of leftovers, so I’m going to be doing this for lunch all next week.
Everything was a touch salty for my tastes. I think I know why.
I believe this meal fell afoul of some technical difficulties on my part. Remember the garlic crushed with salt into a coarse paste? That salt acts as an abrasive to the garlic, ripping up cell walls and letting all the garlicky goodness permeate its surroundings. I used that technique for both the meat and the tzatziki. Plus I added some salt, as per the recipe. Plus I added feta, which carries its own not-insignificant sodium load. As a result, I believe the meat itself became a touch oversalted, then the tzatziki and feta compounded the problem.
If I were to make it again in the future, I’d probably cut the salt by at least twenty five percent. Further, and perhaps more importantly, I wouldn’t abrade the garlic with salt. I’d just chop/smash/mangle the heck out of it. I think the benefit from abrading the garlic is offset by the danger of over-salting the dish.
For lunches this week, I’ll ditch the feta and possibly the sauce. Hell, I may even remake the tzatziki, since it’s so easy.
EDIT: I checked the reviews of this recipe on the Foodtv website. The overwhelming majority of the reviewers say this dish was too salty. I concur. It isn’t just me. Dial it back. Dial it way back.
The Wife Says: Six thumbs up out of ten. Too salty.
I’m gonna get a glass of water.
