Greek Turkey Gyros

I am back on the blogging bandwagon and with a vengeance! My husband loves Greek food – by love I mean asks for it every single time we go out somewhere. I am fine with it but never found a good healthy place. These turkey meatballs are great because they have zucchini and onion in them so kids (and husbands) are non the wiser!I also loved the naan so much I decided to make some pita bread. The blog I get the bread recipe from is amazing and I also got her pita bread from there – I am not even going to attempt to pretend that I know how to make bread so here is the pita. To go with the pita I made some hummus and tzatziki! Here we go:

Hummus:

1 can of chickpeas rinsed
1/4c tahini
1/4c lemon juice
1t cumin
1 clove of garlic
1T olive oil

Blend everything in a food processor and add a little bit of water if the mixture needs some help moving along. Let it sit in the fridge until you are ready for it.

Tzatziki:

1c Greek yogurt
1 clove of garlic crushed
1t lemon juice
1/2 cucumber peeled, seeded and grated – make sure to squeeze any moisture out
1T dill
1T chives

Mix everything together and let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour so that the flavors can mix.

all the accoutrements!!

Turkey Meatballs:

1 1/4c ground turkey
1 egg
1/4-1/2 red onion grated and moisture squeezed out
1 zucchini peeled and grated and moisture removed
1/4c panko
2-3 garlic cloves minced
2T oregano
2T parsley
2T mint

Mix all of the ingredients together and roll them into small balls (I used an ice cream scoop) and put them on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for an hour or so so that they can keep their shape.

fridge time

Once you are ready to cook, you can either grill them or cook them on the stove –  I used our grill pan on the stove.

getting all yummy

Once everything is cooked and nice and brown you can begin assembling. We made ours with hummus, spinach, tomato, red onion slices, 2 turkey balls and tzatziki in the pita.

The final tasty product!

We loved this recipe because you could make components ahead of time so really all I had to do come dinner time was cook the meatballs. Plus you can’t really argue with the price of this meal: $15.50 and with a total of 6 servings of 2 meatballs each serving comes out to $2.58 each. Not too shabby!

Now on to the nutrition – we broke it down to a serving being 1 pita, 2 meatballs, 2T each of hummus and tzatziki and as much spinach and tomatoes as you want. This comes to a total of 340 calories, 7.6g of fat and 22.2g of protein. Boy howdy does that make me happy! Cheap and super healthy! I hope you love this as much as I do!

Indian Feast

Fear not readers, I was not taken by the rapture but I wish my crappy stove would have been taken. To reward your patience I am posting 2 new recipes! Below is how to have pork in your house for about 2 weeks (or less if you are married to my husband). Tonight I wanted to do a project dinner and boy did I almost bite off more than I can chew. Granted I have a tiny apartment kitchen and the worlds biggest POS electric oven that is trying to purposefully ruin everything I make but I did persevere! I made my own naan (and for an unbelievably better price), chicken tikka masala, chickpea salad and to top it off a mango lassi (hey it is Texas and its roughly a thousand degrees outside already). I will go through the steps in the order I made things so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

Naan dough:
2t dry active yeast
1t sugar
1/2c warm water
~3c AP flour
1/2t salt
1/4c oil (I used olive oil)
1/3c plain Greek yogurt (I bought the large container of Fage 0% because the Greek yogurt is going into everything)
1 egg

In a small bowl, combine the water, sugar and yeast and stir until it is combined. Wait about 10 minutes until the froth on the top forms. In a separate bowl combine just 1 cup of the flour and the salt. Once your yeast is all frothy stir in the egg, oil and yogurt and combine it with the flour. Stir and add more flour a 1/2c at a time until a ball has formed. Put the ball on a floured surface and kneed it for 3 minutes adding some flour if it gets too sticky. Once you are done kneeding the ball should be soft but not sticky. Lightly cover the dough with a tea towel and let it sit for 45 minutes.

Once the wait time is over, gently flatten the ball and cut it into 4 equal pieces. Using a heavy pan (I used a cast iron comal that my dad gave me when I moved into my first apartment in college) heat it to medium (don’t go much hotter because you will burn the bottom too fast) and spray it with cooking spray. Don’t roll the smaller balls out until you are about it put it on. Once the pan is hot roll out the first dough so that it is about 1/4″ thick and place it on the pan. Wait until you see bubbles forming and check to make sure it is getting nice and toasty on the bottom. Once the one side is done flip it. I kept the done naan bread in our tortilla warmer so that they stayed warm and yummy. I don’t have any photo documentation because hubs wasn’t home yet and I had flour hands…

Chickpea Salad:
1 can of chickpeas (rinsed until there is no more foam when the water hits them)
1/2t ground mustard
1/2t cumin
1/2t fennel seeds (I had only the whole seeds so I put them in a plastic baggie and crushed them)
1/8t chile powder
1/2c Greek yogurt
3/4T lemon juice
2-3 chopped green onion
1/4c chopped cilantro
1/4c chopped mint

In a pan, heat some canola oil on medium high and add the spices and stir until they are very fragrant. Add the chickpeas and cook for about 5 minutes until they start popping.

Chickpeas a poppin

Put the pan off of the heat and let them cool. While the peas are cooling, in a bowl combine the yogurt, lemon, green onion, cilantro and mint. Once the peas are at room temperature add them to the yogurt mixture and let them sit for at least 10 minutes so that the flavors mix (I put them in the fridge for about 30 minutes).

Yummy-ness

Chicken Tikka Masala:
1/2 yellow onion chopped
1T grated ginger
3 cloves of garlic crushed
1 can tomatoes crushed
4oz. Greek yogurt (see I told you I used it in everything)
1/2 c milk (I only use skim)
1t cumin
1t garam masala
1t tumeric
1/2t chili powder
2-3 chicken breasts sliced thin
cilantro chopped

Heat some canola oil in a large sauce pot and add the onion and cook the onion until it starts to caramelize but don’t let it get too far. Add the ginger and garlic and stir until it gets fragrant – not too long. Add the spices and stir until everything is equally coated. Add the tomatoes, milk and yogurt and stir until combined. Let this simmer for a few minutes until it gets good and thick.

Sauce being sauce

Add the chicken and let everything simmer until the chicken is cooked and its thick and yummy looking. Add the cilantro at the very end. You can serve this over basmati rice or do as we did and just eat it with the naan.

finished product

Mango Lassi:
1-2 mangos chopped
6 oz. Greek yogurt
1c milk
1 1/2T honey
ice

Add everything in the blender and blend for a long time until everything is super soft. It should have the texture of the lightest and fluffiest milkshake ever.

All of this sounds a little daunting but it is doable. I made the dough first and while the dough rested I made the chickpea salad. Before I started the naan I chopped and prepped everything that we would need for the chicken so I could juggle everything. I juggled the naan cooking and the chicken and when I was finishing the chicken and letting it cool I fired up the blender to make the drinks. Easy-peasy!

Om nom nom

Now while we are on a good note lets talk about how flipping CHEAP this feast was! I had enough for 3 people for everything and the total grocery bill came to $11.33 – yea. I had the chicken already and all I really bought were the vegetables, yeast, chickpeas, tomatoes and the most expensive thing – the yogurt but heck I made lots of use for it. So for a total of 3 servings each cost me $3.77 which you can’t beat!

Now the nutrition part gets a little difficult from adding different components. For a serving of 1 naan, 1/2c chickpea salad, 1c of the tikka masala and 1 glass of the lassi I can calculate it to be a total of 627 calories, 17.9grams of fat and 41.44 grams of protein. Yea not what you expected a mountain of food huh? God bless you Greek yogurt!!

Puerto Rican Pernil

Yummy pork action

One of our favorite meals to make is this pork dish for many reasons – its cheap, it makes A LOT and it makes the house smell amazing all day! Its like the pork version of Thanksgiving Day when from the moment you wake up the house smells like turkey.

 

1 pork shoulder about 8lbs (bone in)
2 white onions
2T cumin
2T ancho chile powder
4 cloves of garlic
1T ground pepper
1T chipotle powder

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. In a blender, combine all of the ingredients except for the pork and blend until its a smooth paste.

Onion paste pre-slathering

WARNING: when you take off the lid of the blender – COVER YOUR FACE or you will feel like someone has maced you. It sucks. A lot.

Take the pork and using a sharp knife score both sides in a cross hatch pattern.

Cross hatching

Smear the paste on both sides of the pork making sure to get lots of the paste inside those little nooks you made.

I wish he applied sunscreen on my back like he applies the onions to the pork...

Place the pork in a roasting pan with the fat side up. Put some water on the bottom of the pan so that it covers only 1/4 of the pork.

Cook the pork for 2 hours, rotate and cook again. Keep doing this process of cooking for 2 hours and rotating until the pork has been cooking for a total of 8 hours. If the water level goes dry add just a little bit of water so that the bottom of the pan never gets dry. Make sure the last hour has the fat side up so that the skin gets crispy. If you let it go too far simply put some foil over the pork to bring it back.

FINALLY

Once the 8 hours are up, let the pork cool until it is able to be handled. You can do whatever you want with it from here whether you want to slice it and make a Cuban sandwich or you can shred it (what we do) using 2 forks and just go to town.

Shredding

This pork makes so much that we get to make it many different ways. The first night is usually a gluttony night were we just sit in the kitchen and eat it straight up. We also will make tacos, we eat it with sunny side up eggs, quesadillas, pulled pork sandwiches the list just goes on and on.

The best park is how cheap this is and just how much you get for the money. The pork usually runs about $14 and the onion is about $1 so a total of $15. This last batch we made made a total of 12 servings which breaks down to $1.25 per serving. Can’t beat that! Its so versatile and can be used so many different ways you don’t really get sick of it and I am a notorious for NEVER eating leftovers.

Nutritionally speaking its not too bad either. 1 serving has about 329 calories, 14g of fat and 26g of protein – keeping in mind this is before you add tortillas or cheese to the mix.

My husband also uses this meal as an excuse to make some of my dad’s famous green sauce that he ripped off! Its easy enough and can be tweeked to fit your liking – I personally don’t do spicy and he makes this to the level of spicy that you can taste it twice if you know what I mean…..

2 cans of tomatillos drained
1-2 jalapenos
2-3 habaneros
1 onion
1 bunch of cilantro
2-3 cloves of garlic

all you need

Blend everything together until its pureed and you can eat it there or you can roast it in a sauce pan to round out the flavors (at least that’s what he tells me)

Roasting