Superfast Kofte

So to go with our delicious sweet corn and bean salad, we concocted Superfast Kofte from Cooking Light's March 2007 issue. Kofte are a Turkish meatball made using a variety of tasty spices.


When pulling all the spices for this recipe, we realized we were out of cumin (sad face!). So instead, we substituted a pre-prepared mix of garam masala, an Indian spice blend that includes cumin, allspice, and cinnamon, all of which are also used in this recipe. I suppose we could've easily omitted them and just used the garam masala alone, but as we've observed before the Cooking Light recipes often are less flavorful than we prefer, so we went ahead and followed all of the other directions.


When forming our meatballs, we made them exactly that: balls. In retrospect, we should've made patties to make them easier to eat inside the pita. As it was, we just cut them in half and put the two halves in.


We also experienced some "breakage" of the meatballs as they baked. My suspicion is that we should've chopped the onions just a touch more finely; you can see from the image at right that we did a course chop, and I think that was a major contributing factor.


The other thing I learned while making this dish is that I don't particularly care for Greek-style yogurt. Who knew? If we make these again (and we may, but I wouldn't say it's a definite), I might instead put some extra veggies like spinach and radishes in the pita along with the tomato, to give it a little crunch.

So here, at left, is what we ended up with. It was a tasty little treat, and easy to bring to work the next day (minus the yogurt, that is). The corn and summer vegetable saute is definitely going in our repertoire, but the kofte wasn't impressive enough to earn a spot on the roster. If it's lucky, it might still get to be on our practice squad.

Corn and Summer Vegetable Saute

We're back from vacation and boy, do we have a lot of great things lined up to share this week! First is a tasty side dish from the wayback machine: June 2007's Cooking Light, and a recipe called Corn and Summer Vegetable Saute. I was going through a backlog of ripped out magazine pages this week and the accompanying picture looked so delicious, I couldn't resist.

This one has some high-maintenance ingredients, but it's pretty simple in preparation and definitely worth the effort. The most difficult part for me was cutting the kernels off of the raw ears of corn. Those kernels were flying everywhere! I suppose you could substitute thawed frozen pre-cut kernels, but I'm not sure what impact that would have on taste. As it was, for a little bit of effort spent chasing corn around the kitchen, we got a nice crisp texture.

The recipe itself is pretty simple; just dice up all the ingredients and saute them at different intervals with a little canola oil and some spices. We didn't have any fresh cilantro handy, so we used the dried stuff instead. I'd approximate 10 minutes on the prep work and 16 minutes of cook time.

This dish would make a fantastic side dish for a weekend barbeque, and, packed in small containers, packs a punch of protein for a workday snack. We're definitely adding this one to our repertoire!

Tomorrow, we'll show you the finished product served alongside a Turkish style meatball sandwich. See you then!

Balsalmic Pork with Shallots

Happy Project Runway premiere day, everyone! Because tonight holds not one, but two, hours of delightful Tim Gunn-iness, we wanted to make extra sure to prepare a low-maintenance dish. So it's with pleasure that we bring you Balsalmic Pork with Shallots, compliments of Cooking Light's March 2009 issue.

We decided to pair this with two super-quick sides: roasted red potatoes and broccoli. So to start, we halved 14 size-C red potatoes and placed them cut side up on a foil-lined baking sheet. We drizzled the potatoes with about 1 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil, then sprinkled them with 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt, 1/4 teaspoon of freshly ground pepper, and one little surprise: 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder. The potatoes went in the oven for 25 minutes at 350 degrees and were done just as we were finishing up our sauce.

For our vegetable serving, we used a package of frozen broccoli, prepared as directed. Just four minutes in the microwave and we had a healthy dose of vitamin C to go with the iron in our pork.

One great thing about this dish is that you need very few fresh ingredients: just the pork and shallots, and the rest are all pantry staples.

The pork is pan-fried in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. Even if you're tempted to do something other than salt and pepper it, try to restrain yourself; the shallot sauce packs some great flavor.

Speaking of the shallots, we bought only 5, thinking 8 was surely an overestimation. Now that we've tried it, we should've bought 15! When they're carmelized, the shallots have a light, slightly sweet flavor that left us wanting to smother every bite of pork in them.

The bulk of the time in this recipe comes from preparing the sauce: 18 of the 24 minutes cooking time. Because the sauce calls for low heat and infrequent stirring, you can walk away for a few minutes to straighten up the kitchen, check on the potatoes, and nuke that broccoli. And when you're all done, just look at the deliciousness that will be waiting for you.

We give this recipe an A on ease of preparation, an A+ on taste, and really, we just can't wait for the leftovers!

Ginger-Garlic Chicken with Fresh Fig Pan Sauce

Tonight in the test kitchen, we whipped up a chicken entree, paired with sauteed baby bok choy and long-grain rice. The chicken recipe, Ginger-Garlic Chicken with Fresh Fig Pan Sauce, comes from Cooking Light Magazine's August 2009 issue.

Now, typically, we'd link to the recipe in our post, but it's not available online yet. Instead, we'll provide it here along with our notes.

Ingredients:
4 (6-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1 large garlic clove, grated
1 tablespoon canola oil
2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion bottoms
1 pound ripe Kadota or Brown Turkey figs, cut into 1/4-inch thick wedges
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion tops
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted

This recipe goes fast once you start it, so it's worth investing time upfront to prepare all the ingredients. My fiance gives me a hard time about using so many prep bowls, but I think it's worth the extra dishwashing to avoid rushing around the kitchen like a mad woman. Here's what you need to do before you start:

1. Toast the sesame seeds in a small, non-stick skillet. No oil is required; just put them in the pan over medium heat and keep 'em moving for about 3 minutes, until they start to brown.

2. Peel and grate the ginger. To save on time, we used bottled grated ginger, which resulted in less of a paste and more of a rub. We still got a great tangy ginger taste, so I wouldn't sweat the fresh ingredients on that one.

3. Grate a garlic clove. Again, to save on time and fresh ingredients, you could feasibly just used bottled minced garlic. The flavor is the same, and that's the important part.

4. Slice the figs. We nabbed 1 pound of black Mission figs on sale for $3.99; I'm not up on my fig varieties enough to tell you whether Mission figs are any different from the Kadota or Brown Turkey figs called for by the recipe, but the Mission figs sure were tasty!

5. Slice the green onion. I think it's great that this recipe utilizes the bottoms and the tops of the green onions. Usually I don't make it through a whole bundle in a week, but between this and Monday's dinner, those onions were toast.

Okay, now you're ready to go. Just grab those pantry staples and put them someplace that's easy to access from your stove.

Step 1: Place each chicken breast halfway between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap; pound each chicken breast half to 1/4-inch thickness using a meat mallet or small heavy skillet.This brings us to our first modification. We had some chicken thighs laying around, so we used those instead of chicken breasts. The swap left no real discernable impact to taste, but the thighs do have a more slippery texture.

Step 2: Combine ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and garlic in a small bowl; mash with a spoon to form a paste. Rub paste evenly over chicken; cover and chill 20 minutes.

One thing about the dishes I've tried from Cooking Light is that some - not all, but definitely some - are lacking in the seasoning department. We sensed this would be one of those, so after applying the rub to the chicken thighs, we sprinkled another 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt over them, then tossed them right into the pan.

If you want to wait the 20 minutes to let the flavor soak in, now would be a good time to start preparing your long-grain or jasmine rice. Typically, stove-top rices need about 20 minutes to simmer, which means they'd be complete right around the time your sauce finishes. Perfect!

Step 3: Heat a large nonstick skillet over meadium-high heat. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add chicken to pan; cook 2 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm.

Now that the chicken's done, it's time to make the sauce.

Step 4: Add green onion bottoms to pan; saute 1 minute, stirring frequently. Add figs; saute 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, vinegar, and sesame oil; remove from heat.

At the same time we started the onions, we also began the bok choy side. We took one baby bok choy, previously sliced, and added it to a small, non-stick skillet on medium heat with about 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil. We stirred in 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper and let it saute right along with those green onions and figs in our other pan. Baby bok choy is so tender that it was done in the three minutes it took to finish the sauce.

Plating: Spoon sauce over chicken. Sprinkle with green onion tops and sesame seeds.

The verdict: This dish was delicious and mildly sweet, and, aside from the upfront prep work and the wholly optional chicken-chilling time, took almost no time to prepare. Excellent!