CSA week two - Zucchini and bulgar keftedes

This is the recipe I mentioned on Saturday, but I misremembered my geography. These are Greek meetballs, not Spanish. More specifically, this are a variation on a recipe by chef Jim Botsacos of Molynos in New York based on Macedonian and Thracian versions. Although, to tell the truth, because I couldn't get kefalotyri cheese or ouzo (I chose the grocery to shop at poorly) and because I cut down on the mint (I've had a bad experience with overly-minty meatballs before) [link], these aren't all that Greek at all.

The recipe I'm vulgarizing I found at the Atlantic's food channel.

It goes something like this:

2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 pound zucchini and/or squash, grated
1 cup onions, finely chopped
1 chopped hot pepper, or red pepper flakes to taste
1 cup bulgur wheat
2/3 cup milk
1 pound ground sirloin
2 eggs
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup fresh mint, finely chopped
1/3 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
2 Tablespoons dry white wine
1 Pecorino Romano cheese, finely grated
2 teaspoons kosher salt or to taste
flour for dredging
oil for deep frying

1. In a large cast iron pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add zucchini and sauté for 10 minutes, until they become meltingly soft. You don't want browning, but you do want the zucchini to lose a good bit of moisture. That means you should use a 10-inch pan so the zucchini is piled up and steams somewhat instead of a real proper sauté.

Add the onions and peppers and cook, stirring frequently, 2 minutes longer until onions become translucent. Remove from heat and stir in the bulgar wheat. When the pan seems cool enough that the milk isn't going to sizzle away, stir in that too. Let stand for 15 minutes until the bulgar softens.

2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix the ground sirloin, eggs, garlic, mint, parsley and wine. When the zucchini mixture is ready, mix it in too. Mix in the cheese and salt. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. [The recipe says up to 8 hours. I don't know what happens after that.]

3. Cook a small amount of the mixture in a pan or microwave to check for seasoning. Adjust if necessary.

4. Heat frying oil in whatever you like to deep fry in (I use my flat-bottomed wok a.k.a. migas pan). Measure a heaping Tablespoon of the mixture (I found a coffee scoop worked well), flatten into a thick patty and dredge in flour. Shake off excess flour and fry in batches for 10 minutes, flipping halfway through if your oil is shallow. You're aiming for a deep browning, but not a thick crust. Transfer to paper towels to drain.

Makes around 50.

Serve hot or room temperature, preferably with a yogurt sauce or a Greek salad. Or just pop them into your mouth while you're cooking as soon as they're cool enough to handle.


These are pretty darn tasty. It's got that sort of meat loaf nature of meat, vegetable and starch that have all absorbed each others flavors. It's weird that you can't even pick out the mint or the beef, which actually tastes a bit more like lamb. Other than a little chewiness from some of the bulgar, the textures have melded together too. This would be a great way to sneak zucchini into someone's diet.

Macedonian chickpea stew

I was all set for an event post tonight. I had my ticket for New Times Iron Fork competition: five, prominent I presume, local chefs battling Iron Chef-style for the Golden Fork Award. We in the audience wouldn't get to taste, of course, but we'd have samples from twenty local restaurants instead. But I worked a bit late, hit some traffic on my way to the venue and by the time I got there the parking lot was full and the line out the door. So I went home. I hope someone writes it up and has lots of pictures. It seems like it might have been fun.

I had no plans for dinner so I decided to catch up on my food blogs to see if anything caught my eye as doable with what I had on hand. One thing, from The Kitchn which I've just started reading recently, did. Kitchn is kind of a link-blog so they pointed out to this recipe for a lemony chick pea stir fry on a different blog and that pointed out to another blog with a different version.

I decided I wanted a more proper sauce than those recipes provide so I looked through my refrigerator to see what I could use. I came quite close using a tamarind chili sauce I've got, but I settled on a bottle of pinjur, a Macedonian condiment/ingredient made with roasted eggplant, garlic, parsley, olive oil and walnuts. The bottle I've got adds roasted red pepper which is not uncommon and tomatoes which probably is. Once I made that decision I looked up traditional Macedonian flavors to see what else to add. More parsley and paprika (not the smoked sort) as it turns out. So here's how it went:

Ingredients
1/2 can chickpeas, drained, liquid reserved
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 medium yellow onion, minced
1/4 red pepper, minced (pre-roasted wouldn't be bad)
1 small yellow squash, in 1/2 inch slices and chopped into bite-sized pieces, not necessarily in that order
a few ounces firm tofu or some appropriate meat: lamb I suppose or chicken would do. I chopped my tofu into sub-centimeter cubes. Real meat probably ought to be roughly ground.
hot paprika to taste, paprika quality and intensity varies widely. Use your own judgment.
1 small handful parsley, roughly chopped
2 sizable dollops pinjur
oil for frying
white vinegar or lemon juice

1. In a medium non-stick pan, heat 1 Tablespoon of oil on medium-high heat. Add the chickpeas and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they start to brown.




2. Add garlic, onion and pepper. (If you're using roasted red pepper, don't add it yet.) Turn heat up a little and cook until chick peas start to crisp up, smell really good and turn a golden brown. Remove all to a bowl.





3. Leave heat at medium-high-high, add some more oil, let it heat up a bit and then add the squash and tofu (or meat), a pinch of salt and paprika. Cook until squash is soft and browned. It took me around four minutes but my pan was overcrowded.

4. Return chickpea mixture. Add pinjur, chick pea liquid and parsley (and roasted red pepper if you're using it). Stir to combine and heat through. Check for seasoning and add a splash of vinegar and maybe a little fruity olive oil.

5. Serve warm with some pita bread if you've got it.


All the flavors work quite well together, fairly accidentally but predictably as nothing here, bar the mildly flavored squash, is unusual for Macedonian cuisine. It was a quick cooking process so it hasn't really melded into a whole; it's more a medley of flavors as different combinations brush up against each other in each spoonful. It's a good combination of textures too; both the chick peas and the tofu are meaty against the soft squash, peppers and eggplant. It turned out rather better than I had any right to expect considering; it's actually quite presentable.