Zucchini Keftedes with Feta and Dill

The inspiration for these keftedes (Greek zucchini pancakes) came from a meal I ate at the office recently.  My office has been insanely busy of late and last week we made a few massive delivery orders for everyone on our floor.  I think there were like 10-12 of us here each night.  One night we ordered Chinese and the next night we ordered Greek.  As part of our Greek food fest (we ordered just about the entire menu - it was insane), we ordered two batches of keftedes and they were amazing.  So I wanted to see if we could make equally delicious keftedes at home.  Unfortunately, the delivery keftedes were better than ours - with a crispier texture and a more flavorful interior (and sauce).  The texture was so crispy that it makes me wonder if they deep fried theirs...  The feta that we used didn't have as much salty bite as I thought it would so that led to the keftedes themselves being a little underseasoned.  You could still taste all of the fresh herbs, but the flavors just came off a little muted.  I guess I should have tasted the feta before deciding that it would be salty enough to forgo adding any salt to the zucchini mixture...  Oops.  I actually threw a tiny pinch in (even though the recipe didn't call for it) but I wish I had thrown in at least a 1/2 tsp.  Another thing I wish I had done is make a sauce out of the Greek yogurt, rather than just serving the keftedes with dollops of plain Greek yogurt and a sprig of dill.  Alex and I actually discussed grating in a little garlic and maybe a pinch of lemon zest, but we decided it wasn't necessary.  Maybe next time?

Recipe after the jump!

Greek-Spiced Baked Shrimp

I know that I periodically say that we need to make more Mediterranean food.  I'm not sure why we don't, but when I am menu planning my default is generally Asian, followed by American.  After that I probably start thinking about Italian.  Those defaults are reflected in our cookbook collection.  We have a ton of Asian cookbooks, a decent number of American and Italian cookbooks, and then a smattering of Indian, seafood, etc.  We don't own a single Mediterranean cookbook (if you don't include Italian as Mediterranean).  I guess I should start looking around for a good Mediterranean cookbook to add to our collection.  If anyone has any recommendations, please let me know.

This recipe was one I found online awhile ago.  I believe it was around the time I posted my last resolution to cook Mediterranean food more often.  What I liked best about the dish was the tomato sauce.  It had good flavor and sweetness from the spices and the onions, but wasn't cloying at all.  I really liked the addition of cinnamon and allspice, which gave the sauce a warmth/richness.  We don't typically use cinnamon and allspice in savory dishes (except for say beef rendang), but this dish might inspire me to do it more often.  What I liked least about the dish was that the shrimp itself didn't pick up a huge amount of flavor from the tomato sace - maybe that's why all of the reviews on Epicurious said to marinate the shrimp first.  Oops.  We didn't have time.  When you had bites of shrimp with the tomato sauce on top it was really nice, but when you just had the shrimp by itself it was kind of boring.  We served the shrimp with salad, warm pita and crusty bread (I ate the pita and Alex ate the crusty bread).  I loved dipping the bread through the tomato sauce, so you are definitely going to want to serve something carb-laden on the side to soak up the sauce.

Recipe after the jump!

Lamb Souvlaki Sandwiches with Tzatziki Sauce

I periodically tell Alex that we need to make more Mediterranean food.  Asian cuisine is our go-to, and failing that we end up making "American" food or Italian food.  Rarely do we make Mediterranean food, which is something that I really want to change for a number of reasons.  First, I love Mediterranean flavors - lemon, oregano, olive oil, olives, garlic, tart yogurts, etc.  The flavors are so simple and yet so satisfying and delicious.  I also love how healthy the diet is overall.  And while lamb isn't exactly as healthy as say, tofu, it is an indulgence that I enjoy from time-to-time and is totally fine when eaten in moderation.  I might try the recipe with chicken or pork in the future, as healthier alternatives to lamb, but we used lamb this time because I picked up some leg of lamb the other day with souvlaki in mind as the end goal.  I actually picked up several pounds of leg of lamb because there are several lamb recipes that I have been wanting to make, but haven't gotten around to because leg of lamb tends to be pretty pricey in NYC.

Since lamb (and all red meat with the potential exception of bison) isn't exactly super healthy, Alex and I made a resolution about a month ago to only eat it at restaurants or on the weekend.  No cooking red meat during the week.  But we broke our resolution this time because we had guests coming for the weekend and I really wanted to make my souvlaki.  Oops.  In order to lighten this sandwich up, we used multigrain flatbreads and added chopped up baby spinach, tomatoes and onions.  We also used nonfat Greek yogurt to make the tzatziki, rather than the whole-fat variety.  I find that when you make tzatziki with nonfat yogurt instead of whole-fat, it is a little thinner and less creamy.  Since we were using the tzatziki as the sauce for our sandwich and not a dip that was supposed to stand alone it was absolutely fine that it was a little thinner.  The end result was that the dish wasn't as heavy (or detrimental to your health) as it could have been, while still retaining a lot of flavor.  The rosemary and garlic in the marinade made the apartment smell delicious while we pan-roasted the lamb, and marinating the lamb overnight gave it really nice flavor.  I'm glad I stuck to my guns on this one because it was a really nice and satisfying meal.  Maybe I will try it out with pork next time, but then again, maybe not...

Recipe after the jump!

Dinner Spanakopitas

Every once in awhile Alex and I take out all the stops and make a crazily labor-intensive meal.  It seems that every time we decide to stuff something, be it dumplings, pan-fried buns, or spanakopita, it takes us forever.  For instance, with this recipe we took the phyllo dough out of the freezer around 2pm so that it would be defrosted in time for dinner.  According to the package instructions, the best way to defrost them phyllo is to leave the box of phyllo out on the counter at room temperature for 5 hours.  Realistically Alex and I can only do that on the weekend, unless we want to eat dinner at midnight.  On my way home from work this evening (yes I know it's a Sunday, but sometimes I have to go into work on the weekend) I swung by the grocery store to pick up the last remaining ingredient for our spanakopita.  I had already picked up everything, we ended up using the eggs this morning for breakfast so I had to go pick some of those up.  Once I got home it was about 8:30 pm and then we had to go through the whole process of making the filling (which Alex had already started on).  And then I had to figure out how to butter the phyllo dough and roll it up properly.  I'm not going to lie, it was another 10:00 pm dinner.  I imagine that working with phyllo dough gets easier the more you do it, but man that stuff is fragile.  The last time we made a meal this crazy was when we made our Panfried Pork and Scallion Mini-Buns.  Granted, those mini-buns had more active cooking time because we had to make the dough, rather than just defrost some phyllo.

While this meal was easier to make than the mini-buns, the mini-buns were worth the extra effort.  At a certain point if you are going to put forth a ton of effort you might as well put forth a little extra effort for a more successful final product.  Don't get me wrong, these spanakopita were far from bad.  In fact, they were quite good.  With a few tweaks here and there to the filling and a little practice with phyllo dough, they could be even better.  But they weren't the best spanakopita I have ever had and if you're going to go to the trouble to make them at home, you really want them to be amazing.  If I can go to Trader Joe's and buy a package of frozen spanakopita that are as good as the ones I am spending hours to make at home, that really makes you wonder why you are bothering.  With all of that said, I'm really glad that we finally bit the bullet and made this recipe because I have wanted to make it for awhile now.  I'm not sure if I will be making it again anytime in the near future (esp since there is a little Greek take out shop a few blocks from our apartment that supposedly has amazing spanakopita that we have yet to try), but I'm pretty excited to add a new dish to my repertoire.

Recipe after the jump!

Pork Souvlaki

When I was younger my parents used to take me to this a food court in a mall near our house where I would eat pork souvlaki.  Looking back on it I'm not sure if their souvlaki was actually any good or not, but I sure liked it (although I certainly didn't know any better at the time).  My parents liked it too and I assume that they had a better basis for judging the quality of the souvlaki.  For the record, this wasn't one of those typically terrible food courts that you find in most malls and airports; it was better than average and offered options beyond Panda Express and Sbarro's.  Since then I have tried the pork souvlaki at various restaurants (rather than food courts), but I have never made it at home.  We had some pork shoulder defrosted for a stir-fry that I had intended to make tonight for dinner, but a comment Alex made this morning when we were discussing lunch about wanting hot weather food rather than dim sum resonated with me.  As a side note, we both decided that the appropriate food for hot weather was tacos, but more on that later.  So when I started thinking about dinner I decided that wasn't really in the mood for stir-fry because it struck me as heavy.  Somehow souvlaki sounded lighter and more appropriate for hot weather.  So we made souvlaki instead.

And it was delicious.  The pork was so moist and tender, plus it had great flavor.  We let it marinate for just over 4 hours, but it really picked up a lot of flavor from the marinade in that time.  I wonder how much more flavor it would have absorbed if we had left it to marinate overnight?  I guess I will have to find out next time!  You can clearly taste the lemon, garlic and oregano, all of which scream Greek food to me.  We served the pork with some tzatziki and a fattoush salad - a recipe that I tried out for the first time just over a year ago.  It's a marvelous salad, with flavors that totally complimented the souvlaki.  Actually, this meal was so successful that I think I am going to try out some spanakopita later this weekend!

Recipe after the jump!