from our test kitchen

Adam loves food. He loves trying out new recipes, he loves really good meat, he loves cooking with fresh herbs and spices and he loves finding fabulous restaurants. Which means that our “budget bootcamp” monthly food allotment reductions will be a little rough for him.

So for the last month or so, we’ve turned our stove, oven, breadmaker and grill into a mini test kitchen. Three or four times a week, we’ve been trying out dinner recipes that we’ve found online (or modified from our stash) that are less than $1.25 per serving. Cheap healthy good has been a terrific resource for us (she breaks down the cost-per-serving for all her recipes) and we’ve made some amazingly delicious discoveries! Even if you’re not needing to stick to such a stringent dinner budget, I thought y’all might like to share in some of our findings.

TEST KITCHEN RECIPE REVIEW

Recipe: Falafel in pitas with yogurt sauce

Source: Cheap healthy good

Rating (out of 5): 5!

Price per serving: About $0.82 (falafel and yogurt sauce= $.56 per serving, pitas from the middleeastern market= $0.26 each)

Comments: This recipe made about 30 falafel balls for us… we used about 5 per pita and made about 6 servings total. If you like Middleeastern/Mediterranean dishes, you should definitely try this one out!

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/2 large onion, roughly chopped (about 1 cup)

2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp red pepper flakes

4 cloves of garlic

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp baking powder

4 Tbsp flour

2 Tbsp vegetable oil for frying

1 tomato, chopped for garnish

Romaine lettuce, for garnish

Eating Well’s Tahini sauce (listed below)

1 pita per serving

1) Place onion, garlic and pepper flakes in food processor. Pulse until they’re about 1/8-in. big.

2) Add beans, parsley, and cilantro and chop until “pieces are about the size of a large pinhead.” You don’t want a puree here.

3) Dump the items from the food processor into a bowl. Stir in salt, cumin, baking powder and flour until well-mixed., but not really a dough.

4) Stick it in the fridge, covered, for anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. The longer the better. (the first time, we only put it in the fridge for 15 minutes, and the second time we left it for a few hours, which were both fine).

5) With your hands, make small falafel hockey pucks about 1 to 1-1/2 inches in diameter and ¾ of an inch high. (The flat surface will help with the frying.)

6) Turn oven to 400ºF.

7) Heat 2 Tbsp vegetable oil in a huge ovenproof skillet on medium-high. Fry the pucks for about 3 minutes on the first side, and 2 minutes on the second, until they’re golden brown.

8) When finished, stick skillet in oven (or transfer pucks to a Pam-ed aluminum foil lined cookie sheet) and bake for 10-12 minutes.

9) Stick four balls in half a pita with tomatoes and lettuce. Drizzle with yogurt sauce (recipe below).

Eating Well Yogurt sauce

1/2 cup low-fat plain yogurt

2 Tbsp tahini

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

1/4 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients thoroughly in bowl. That’s it.