Spiced Goat Meatballs, Black Pepper Tofu, Buffalo Pork Burgers, Arugula Pesto Spaghetti & Persimmon Muffins
No major cooking projects this week, but we ate well with all kinds of local ingredients like usual!
Spiced Goat Meatballs and Rice
We have been loving really herby goat burgers lately, but meatballs make better leftovers, so I went that route this week!
I used two pounds of ground goat and sort of a Turkish seasoning blend with turmeric, garlic, fennel, fenugreek, coriander and cumin. And I used some bread crumbs (including a piece of stale focaccia) and an egg to bind them together. I like to start them on the stove top in cast iron pans and then finish in the oven, for even browning and crispy outsides!
To go with it, we did black rice, steamed broccolini (from the freezer), a little dill kraut, castelvetrano olives, a homemade almond-cashew sauce and homemade fermented hot sauce. Simple, tasty and great leftovers so the week!
Black Pepper Tofu with Oyster Mushrooms & Spinach
For a quick mid week meal, I did another take of lightly battered and oven baked tofu, this time loaded with fresh cracked black pepper, which really came through in the flavor and was perfect!
The rest of the “batter” is oil (olive or avocado), soy sauce, coconut aminos, cornstarch and nutritional yeast. I also added some garlic powder and black sesame seeds.
We had a ton of oyster mushrooms on hand, so I did a stir fry with those and added some baby spinach at the end, then served over leftover black rice with Japanese barbecue sauce and some cucumber kimchi (though I just fished the peppers and onions out!). It was really tasty and also great as leftovers for the second half of the week.
Buffalo Pork Burgers with Sweet Potato Waffle Fries
Grant is still on his waffle fry kick with the special mandolin he recently got, so we did a round of fried sweet potato fries with them. And then came out really good!
Irish potatoes seem to work fairly well just baked in the oven, but the sugar content in the sweet potatoes and the thin slice that the mandolin is set to meant that when we tried sweet potato fries in the oven last week, they too easily burned but the non burned ones didn’t really crisp up.
The main event with the fries was buffalo sauce laced pork burgers. I saw a recipe from Pinch of Yum for buffalo chicken burgers, but since we haven’t had any producers making ground chicken in a while, I figured pork would work well in its place. And it did! The pork took on the buffalo sauce flavor very well.
I made a ranch spread with creole cream cheese, dried dill and Green Goddess seasoning and we had it with a salad with Compostella lettuce, Faust strawberries, pistachios and fried bread cheese, topped with a strawberry rose vinegar vinaigrette.
Meal Prep Spaghetti with Arugula Pesto, Tuna & Turnips
I got ahead of my lunch meal prep this week by making this yesterday afternoon. Tuna and turnips probably doesn’t sound all that exciting but it checks all the boxes for meal prep for me — filling, with plenty of protein, veggies and fiber.
I started by cutting the hakurei turnips pretty small and tossing with sea salt and olive oil and roasting in the toaster oven.
Then I cooked some whole wheat spaghetti and once that was finished, I drained it and used the same pot to sauté some red onions and garlic in butter. I deglazed with some white wine, the liquid from the tuna and pasta water, eventually adding the canned tuna and roasted turnips. Then I added the pasta back in and mixed in some arugula pistachio pesto from the freezer.
We ate it for lunch with flaky parmesan and I portioned out the rest for lunches this week!
Persimmon Chocolate Chip Muffins
I had some persimmon puree in my fridge to use up, so I decided to make muffins. Persimmon already has such a nice vanilla flavor and so the puree went really well with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.
I only had whole wheat flour, so I used that with some rye flour. The warm flavors with the dark chocolate made for a really nice treat/dessert all week!