Let's get one thing straight.

Whatever you had for dinner tonight, or even yesterday night, it was nowhere as good as the dinner I made tonight (NOTE: This is a blog I prepared last week before I had my camera cord). But I'm going to backtrack to yesterday because I made a kickass dinner then, too. I've seen all these commercials for Jalna pot-set yogurt, and it looked delicious so I bought some, forgetting that I prefer vanilla to plain. So I had all this yogurt I didn't want to eat and needed a recipe to use it in. Last night I made fried zucchini & feta fritters with tzatziki sauce. The fritters recipe I found at this site. It made 4 fritters, and I'm going to buy another zucchini to remake this recipe in a couple of days since I have wayyyy too much tzatziki sauce.

FRIED ZUCCHINI & FETA FRITTERS (serves 2)
Ingredients:
1 small zucchini (grated)
1/4 cup feta (crumbled)
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1 green onion (chopped)
1 handful dill (chopped)
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons oil

Directions:
1. Mix the zucchini, feta, flour, egg, green onions, dill, salt and pepper in a bowl.
2. Heat the oil in a pan.
3. Spoon the zucchini mixture into the pan and cook until golden brown on both sides.

It's a very simple recipe, except that I don't have a grater so I was using a carrot peeler to grate the zucchini, and that took forever. They were so tasty! Like marginally healthier latkes. As for the tzatziki sauce, I got the recipe from the Jalna website, but you could subsitute any low/no fat plain yogurt, or greek yogurt of course. Below is 1/2 of the recipe that I made, because I think what's below will yield enough sauce for 8 fritters.

TZATZIKI SAUCE
Ingredients:
1/2 of a medium continental cucumber
3/4 cup plain yogurt (fat free)
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 of a large clove of garlic, crushed
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tbsp chopped fresh mint
1 tbsp dill

Directions:
1. Peel the cucumber, chop in half lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds. Chop very finely or grate/shread.
2. Combine ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Serve cold.


Then tonight I cooked a recipe which my dad had given me a couple of days ago. I was complaining about my boring eating routine, and he suggested I make fried Italian meatballs. They were INCREDIBLE. Here's the basic recipe, and you can make a ton of substitutions (turkey, spices, type of bread):

FRIED ITALIAN MEATBALLS (serves 4)
Ingredients:
1/2 kg ground beef
1 egg
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 slices bread
handful chopped parsley
salt, pepper, basil, oregano to taste
olive oil


Directions:
1. Moisten the bread and then tear it into teensy pieces.
2. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and knead until well mixed.
3. Roll into 8 balls.
4. Pan fry until crispy brown on all sides.


The meatballs were pretty big, each about the size of a kiwifruit, and I could only eat 2, with side dishes. That's why I figure the recipe serves 4 if you serve up the appropriate side dishes. I baked some garlic bread slices from the refrigerated section of the supermarket (I think homemade would have tasted better - sliced french bread, margarine, garlic, salt) and made a simple caprese salad (mozzarella bocconcini, cherry tomatoes, basil leaves). I served the meatballs on a scoop of hot pureed tomato.


Now I have six of these left and I think I will make a meatball sub tomorrow. Or just toss 'em in some pasta! They were super easy to make except that my parsley/bread/onions were pretty roughly chopped, so that the meatballs wanted to crumble until I got them fried a little. They were very fun to make. I can't remember the last time I worked with raw meat, and it is pretty satisfying to eat the finished product. Kneading food is just fun - maybe I'll do something with dough in a little whilte.