Tuesday 15 October 2013

Tasty Tzatziki

Tonight's dinner was a repeat of that delicious spicy broccoli pasta I told you about on Friday -  but this time, David was here to sample it too. I am happy to say that he found it as delicious as I did, and we are both in agreement that it will be a regular feature in our dinner menus from now on. I love making food that I enjoy, but half of the enjoyment of eating surely comes from the company you enjoy the food with, so it's always nice to know that David's a fan of one of my favourite dishes (yes, I just made it for the first time last week and already it's one of my favourites!).

Tzatziki saves the day!
Last week wasn't all discovering new favourite recipes though. On Thursday, I was really excited to try a new falafel recipe from A Girl Called Jack. Like Jack, I too have tried on various occasions to make my own falafel (after falling in love with the stuff when I was living in Germany - whilst all my meat-eating friends were munching on their döner kebaps, I was discovering the delights of falafel). Also like Jack, none of my previous attempts had quite lived up to my expectations. (Ok, basically they crumbled and fell apart completely.) So I was really excited to see that she had finally cracked the perfect falafel!

Yeah....falling apart in the pan - not great!
Unfortunately, my attempts to recreate this perfect falafel failed. This could be because I shallow (rather than deep) fried my falafel, and the turning could have aided the falling apart. Or perhaps it was because I used a food processor rather than a hand held masher to mash the chickpeas. Either way, I had the same problem of the falafel falling apart. They were still tasty, in the garlic and coriander pita bread, accompanied by salad, but what really lifted this failed experiment was the delicious tzatziki I made to drizzle over the falafel. This is an incredibly simple recipe that could be used as a dip for almost anything you fancy, or if you are able to make your falafel more successfully than me (please tell me how!), then it would obviously be great with that.

Not the full portion, but this is what the finished product should look like!

Here's how I did it.

Ingredients:

150ml natural yoghurt
1/3 cucumber (I really love my cucumber, so feel free to use less if you prefer!)
2 garlic cloves
3 tsp lemon juice
a few mint leaves, finely chopped

Method:

Pour the yoghurt into a bowl. Chop the cucumber into tiny pieces (I chop it firstly into rounds of maybe 1/2cm thick, then cut each round - you can stack them and do several at once - into slices one way across, then the other way across). Add this to the yoghurt. Crush the garlic cloves into the mixture, add the lemon juice and mint, and then stir everything together. Yum!


On another note completely, I have just discovered that one of my friends has recently started blogging too, so I wanted to share her blog with you. Tales of Adventure, Big and Small is not a cooking blog, but shares some of Laura's musings (and she's my friend, so you know they're worth listening to!) and good ideas. I love her fruity vodka idea, and am just thinking of which of my friends would love this as a Christmas gift. So why not take a wee look?

Please do let me know if you've had more success than I have with falafel. Or if you have something that is always a failure when you try to make it, let me know - maybe I'll have some tips for you?

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