Eating Provence with Elizabeth Bard, Author of LUNCH IN PARIS and the New PICNIC IN PROVENCE (and a giveaway!)

I am honored to have kindred spirit Elizabeth Bard on French Revolution.  Any woman who grows up near New York, moves to France, marries a Frenchman, then moves to Provence, opens an ice cream store, and spends every spare minute writing about what she eats in her fabulous life is welcome to take over these pages.  She has chronicled it all in Lunch in Paris and her latest memoir with recipes, Picnic in Provence.  I am an unerring fan.  Here, a few of her thoughts about France, food, Twizzlers, and asparagus tongs.

Bon app!

I will be excerpting two of the recipes from Elizabeth’s Picnic in Provence over the coming days.  In celebration of the new book, Elizabeth has agreed to answer a question submitted by readers!  And one lucky reader will win a copy of Picnic in Provence.  So leave your questions in the comments section of this post, or on Facebook (#PicnicInProvence) or Twitter (@FrenchRev #PicnicInProvence) or Instagram (@KerrySaretsky #PicnicInProvence).  Pre-order Picnic in Provence here.

Picnic in Provence Market Pics

Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Bard

Interview with Writer and Entrepreneur Elizabeth Bard

Interview

Kerry Saretsky: What defines Frenchness?

Elizabeth Bard: Pleasure and moderation.

KS: What defines French food?

EB: Ditto, pleasure and moderation

KS: What makes food Parisian?

EB: Butter.

KS: And what makes food Provençal?

EB: Olive Oil.

KS: What are the best towns and restaurants to visit in Provence?

EB: We live in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, which is the less developed, some might say more authentic, part of Provence. A visit to the Monday morning market in Forcalquier is a real treat. Just outside Cereste is the hilltop village of Montjustin; they have a tiny Bistro de Pays that serves a “menu unique” – you eat whatever they are making that day. The terrace is sunny and protected from the wind; even in Feb[ruary], you can eat in a tee-shirt. Whenever we need a two hour vacation – that’s where we go. 

KS: Your favorite places to eat in Paris?

EB: Honestly, now that we live in the countryside, where there is no ethnic cuisine of any kind, when I go back to Paris all I want to eat is Thai and Vietnamese food in Belleville… 

KS: What ingredients and tricks have you picked up since moving to France?

EB: Don’t judge a book by its cover – my friend the hairy celery root is a case in point. 

KS: What was the moment when you thought to yourself, I’ve gone native?

EB: There was the almost tribal satisfaction of gutting by first whole fish…

KS: What foods do you long for when you come back to America?

EB: Crap – Twizzlers, Dots, Hershey’s Kisses. But my palate has changed so much that this kind sugar now gives me a migraine. I love a good rare hamburger with fried onions, my mother’s noodle pudding and the apple cider donuts from the farm stand. 

KS: What is the secret to perfect ice cream?

EB: If you want great texture from a home machine, it’s best to eat the ice cream the day (or even the hour) it’s made.

KS: What advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs?

EB: Dream big, work harder than you thought possible, be stubborn about your principals.

KS: Favorite food writers or food books?

EB: Like everyone I know, I’m cooking my way through Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem at the moment. I love reading M.K. Fisher. Nigella Lawson always makes me hungry – I love her dry, honest voice. I somehow reread Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential at least once a year. He’s got a fabulous ear for the kitchen. 

Elizabeth Bard Family

Photo by Cindi de Channes

The Epicurean Proust

1 What is your idea of perfect culinary happiness?

A really terrific fresh-filled cannoli. 

6 What is your greatest culinary extravagance?

A few Christmases ago, I bought myself a huge cherry red Le Creuset.

15 What or who is the greatest love of your life?

My husband.

16 When and where were you happiest?  In life?  In food?

On holiday with my husband in a tiny seaside village in Crete, eating grilled calamari and reading 19th century novels.

19 What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Doing something I love for a living, and recording family history in the process.

21 Where would you most like to live?  Paris or Provence?  Small town or big city?

I’m still a city girl at heart, but I love the neighborliness of the village. And my son just adopted a goat!

22 What is your most treasured culinary possession?

My mother’s silver asparagus tongs.

28 Who is your hero of food?

My friend Marion Peyric. She’s an organic farmer in Cereste, and she shares her love of all things true and tasty with her friends, her clients, her interns, her colleagues. She’s a wonderful ambassador for the land and foods she loves. 

35 What is your culinary motto?

Bon appetit!

Other reading: French Revolution’s review of Picnic in ProvenceFrench Revolution’s Review of Lunch in Paris from 2011The French Revolution Lunch in Paris Giveaway

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Reading Elizabeth Bard’s New Book PICNIC IN PROVENCE

Elizabeth Bard

Photo by Cindi de Channes

I may be a “millennial”, but I am old enough to remember a time that in order to make a friend, you had to be in the same room as her — at least once.

I am not a typical blogger.  I love writing about food, and sharing it, but it’s not in my nature to broadcast myself.  I am, I admit it, intensely shy.  Hence, my “Internet friends” are few.  And I can’t believe Elizabeth Bard is one of them.

I can’t remember exactly how we met.  I think it was around her first book, Lunch in Paris.  If you haven’t read it, you must.  I had thought it might be flippant, a chouquette-light, cavalier telling of a happy romance between an American girl and a French boy that ends in profiteroles and a balloon bouquet on the Eiffel Tower.  It was not that.  Elizabeth is a great capturer of the way things are.  Her books are poignant remembrances of her recent past.  Lunch in Paris is her love story with her husband, Gwendal, the love of her life (as you’ll find out in tomorrow’ interview).

But it was not all profiteroles and balloons.  She captures the difficulty of falling in love with an ocean between your passports, and only a handful of common words between you.  And as that love deepens, and you begin to come closer, losing part of your old self only to find a new self that is marvelous but unexpected, and going through the true trials of life (like the loss of Gwendal’s father to cancer and discovering one’s calling and career).  Anyone who has been deeply in love and lived a real life feels the reverberation of her stories, like a bell struck true.

Her new book, Picnic in Provence, which comes out on April 7th, picks up the story.  The happy couple is married and in Paris.  But even after professional success, getting everything that you worked your whole twenties for, the thirty-something couple can’t help but ask each other — what’s next?  Off to Provence, to a whole new adventure: a child, a tiny village, and a little ice cream shop recently voted one of the best in all France.

Again, Elizabeth’s frankness makes her stories intensely relatable.  She questions herself over whether and how to be a mother.  She stumbles at losing family income to pursue the family ice cream shop.  She struggles with an Americanness she at times describes as nearly gauche in a sea of seemingly effortless French perfection.  And through it all, is the view of village life from a city girl who always pictured success in the city, life in the city, love in the city.  And the picture left with the reader is one of aching nostalgia, the opposite of my friendship with Elizabeth, where neighbors become friends simply BECAUSE they are in the same room as each other, people harvest together, people gather.  Reading it, I felt galaxies away from my apartment in the sky over New York City, and began to wonder myself — what’s next?

Let me share my favorite metaphor, as she discusses the raising of her son:

“A baby is a wishing well.  We walk by, every day, and throw our pennies in.  Most are bright and shiny, full of smiles and possibility.  Some are tarnished with bad memories, unlucky genes.  Others have been hiding under the couch cushions all these years, just waiting for someone to dig them out.  A baby is a wishing well.  Everyone puts their hopes, their fears, their past, their two cents, in.”  Excerpted from Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard, 2015.

And through it all, she eats.  Like me, and I am sure like you, she is a Prufrock, measuring out her life in coffee spoons and other meal-related metrics.  So each chapter contains the recipes that recollect the life described therein.  I still remember the bistro ribs from Lunch in Paris, shared at a lovers’ corner table, cozily tucked away from the street.  Mr. English and I are passionate Provence picnickers.  It is so ceremonial for us that we revisit the same markets each summer, have a Laguiole pocket knife and (I’m not kidding) weightless cutlery expressly for our Provençal picnics, and know to have the proprietor select our fruit for “today, tomorrow, and the day after”.  Elizabeth captures the sweet juiciness of Provençal produce perfectly.  The melons that weep.  The white peaches that explode with perfume.  The tomatoes!  I have to stop.  Again, as I stared at the sad city produce in my fridge I wondered what on Earth I was doing here.  Because Elizabeth writes not only to take you there visually, but also gustatorily, and you just cannot help being swept away.  And Haute Provence is DEFINITELY a place to which you want to be swept away.

And they are both memoirs with recipes.  Who doesn’t love that as a genre!?

PinP Cover

Picnic in Provence

Both books are ultimately about taking a chance — a big leap.  Doing something you didn’t expect to do — something no one around you expects you to do.  Cracking through the plaster mold you had for your life, going off piste, and come out through the anxiety of it, the work of it, the pain of it in a far better place than you could ever have imagined.  Better than profiteroles and a balloon bouquet at the top of the Eiffel Tower.  And in that, her books are inspiring.  Because she is real, she has fears — fears that I have too.  And she leaps anyway. And suddenly, as a reader, I question how much more I can push myself, how much more faith I should have, and how much more stake I should put in getting to that place just beyond comfortable.

After years of email back-and-forth, I finally met Elizabeth in New York a couple of months ago.  I was nervous — as I said, I can be shy.  Both online, and in analog.  But she is just like she is on the page — honest, open, razor smart, perceptive, generous, and kind.  I found so much in common with her.  A New York-area girl who loves books and food and her husband.  Just reading her interview, I realized that we both live for celery root and Ottolenghi and have the same culinary mantra.  But there was more — we spoke of real issues in the wake of Charlie Hebdo, of motherhood for type-A women in the twenty-first century, of careers in writing.  And I realized that in meeting her, I had taken one of the leaps that her books are always beckoning me to take.  That little chance to extend myself that results in something so terrific, I marveled that I ever hesitated, ever wanted to be shy.  Think of all I could have missed.  That is what Elizabeth’s books are.  Glimpses at all you could miss if you don’t follow that joie de vivre and take a chance at life.

COMING TOMORROW, AN INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH BARD.  MERCI, MON AMIE!

Other reading: French Revolution’s Review of Lunch in Paris from 2011; The French Revolution Lunch in Paris Giveaway

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Pot de Crème with Palais des Thés’ Chaï Impérial

RECIPE: Rich, Exotic Chocolate - Chai Pot de Crème

Chai Pot de CrèmeI like to listen to the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong station on Pandora while I’m cooking.  There is a classic lightness to it that I find both grounding and energy-giving.  It has also accompanied me through not a few Excel models at the office – a true companion!  Yesterday, as I was whizzing together these little pots de crème, I couldn’t help despairing at the lyrics that floated through the kitchen: the snow is snowing, the wind is blowing, but I will weather the storm…

I cannot weather another storm!

I couldn’t believe it as I looked out my window that the snow really was still snowing, the wind still blowing.  I had braved my little local farmer’s market under an unrelenting dusting of flurries that morning in the hopes of finding seasonal wonders.  I had come back with apples – not spring asparagus or anything else of note – and the still snow paraded steadily past my window.

Chai Pot de CrèmeTimes like this call for pot de crème, or as I affectionately call it, old reliable.  I recently heard pot de crème described on the Cooking Channel as chocolate pudding your mom could never make – or something like that.  It is better than chocolate pudding – so thick you have to tug it off the spoon with your lips; so dense and velvety and intense it’s like staring down the maw of some chocolate demon.  It’s marvelous.  But, it’s also easier to make than chocolate pudding!  And what I love about it is that it’s a pantry classic.  You don’t need Mother Nature to cooperate in any way, and the little chocolate pots of wonder will offer you more comfort on a stormy night than even Ella and Louis.

Imperial Chai - Palais des ThesBecause after this New York winter I am starting to get my usual itch to travel to faraway (read: warmer) places, I spiked my classic dark chocolate pot de crème with a spicy, enveloping loose chai tea sent to me by Palais des Thés (merci!), a French maker of wonderful, approachable whole-ingredient loose tea.  When the spoonful of chocolate first hits your tongue, you taste that bittersweet dark chocolate, and then, after a second, the flavors of ginger, orange, pink peppercorns, cinnamon, and cardamom break through that bitter note to explode in this warm, exotic spiciness.  The chocolate warms your heart, the spices warm your soul, and the whole thing whisks you away to a better place.

Palais des Thés Chaï ImpérialI served it last night at a dinner party in our little Manhattan apartment.  And though the snow was still snowing, the wind still blowing under the streetlights far below, I have my pot de crème – and my friends, and my love, of course – to keep me warm.

Thank you, Palais des Thés for the Chaï Impérial.

I also think this pot de crème would work terrifically well at an Easter lunch or Passover seder.

Bon app!

Rich, Exotic Chocolate - Chai Pot de Crème
serves 4

Chai Pot de CrèmeINGREDIENTS

  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1 tablespoon Palais des Thés Chaï Impérial
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3 ounces 70% cocoa dark chocolate, broken up
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • Small pinch of sea salt

METHOD

In a small saucepot, combine the cream, chai tea, and vanilla extract.  Heat over medium heat until bubbles form around the edge of the cream.  Take off the heat, and allow to steep for 15 minutes. Add the chocolate, egg yolks, sugar, and salt to a blender.  After the cream and tea have steeped, heat them again together just until bubbles form around the edges (you want the cream warm when you add it to the chocolate so they melt together).  Strain the cream into the blender.  Whiz everything together until smooth and incorporated. Pour the pot de crème mixture into four small glasses or ramekins, knocking each one gently against the counter to burst any air bubbles.  Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least four hours, but preferably overnight.  Top with homemade whipped cream to lighten the dense, velvety chocolate.print this recipe
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Categories: 30 Minutes, Cheap, Chocolate, Desserts, Easy, Eat, Recipes, Vegetarian
 

Rose Crispy Treats for Valentine’s Weekend

RECIPE: Rose Crispy Treats

Rose Crispy TreatsThis weekend, two of our best friends from London are coming to stay, and for one of them, it’s her first time in America.  I’m making them Bavette aux Échalotes for a double Valentine’s dinner at home, and a bay scallop version of this scallop persillade gratin.  But I wanted something homemade and typically American to greet them when they arrive very late tonight.  I settled on Rice Krispies treats, something that always makes me feel at home because, ironically, my Moroccan grandmother makes the best ones around.

I know they’re not very glamorous.  But in France, they have gorgeous, cloud-fluffy artisanal marshmallows, often flavored with floral waters, like rose or orange blossom.  I thought, can I bring a little bit of that French elegance to down home Rice Krispies treats?  Only one way to find out.

Late last night, long past my bedtime while my bavette was blipping away after three hours of post-work night braising, I stirred a spoonful of rose water into the classic Rice Krispies treats recipe.  I topped off each little square with a candied rose petal, and sprinkled them with white sanding sugar.  Honestly, I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but it was a revelation.  Just that hint of that sweet, grassy essence of rose takes the humble marshmallow from hermetic plastic bag to confiserie.  I am sitting writing this resisting my third crispy, gooey, flowery square of the day.

I know, Rice Krispies and rose water.  Very Franglais.  But hey, that’s me!

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Bises…

Rose Crispy Treats
makes 12

Rose Crispy Treats*Adapted from the back of the Rice Krispies box

INGREDIENTS

  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 10 ounces marshmallows
  • 1 tablespoon rose water
  • 6 cups puffed rice cereal
OPTIONAL
  • 1 drop of red or pink food coloring
  • Pink sanding sugar
  • Candied rose petals

METHOD

In a large stockpot, melt the butter over medium heat.  Add the marshmallows and stir until melted through.  Take off the heat, and stir in the rose water.  If using food coloring, add now.  Finally, stir in the puffed rice cereal.  Spread into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish sprayed with cooking spray.  Spray a piece of parchment slightly larger than 13 inches long with cooking spray.  Spray-side down, lay the parchment on the rice and marshmallow mixture, and push down gently until you have a compact, even layer.  Remove the parchment and decorate with sanding sugar or candied rose petals if using.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours before slicing into 12 squares.print this recipe
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Categories: 15 Minutes, Cheap, Desserts, Easy, Eat, Recipes
 

Homey Crème Fraîche Baked Chicken

RECIPE: Homey Crème Fraîche Baked Chicken

Creme Fraiche Baked Chicken

Poor Mr. English.  He always asks me, what’s the point of marrying a girl that you can take-out-of-New-York-but-you-can’t-take-New-York-out-of-the-girl if she won’t make you chicken soup?

I’m chicken intolerant.  It’s not something I often confess in foodie circles, but it’s true.  To me, fried chicken is like ice cream to a lactose intolerant.  So unutterably irresistible, and so not worth the agony.

So the chicken recipes on this site are anytime Valentines to my husband.  I have a bite, maybe two, to assess my work, down a glass of seltzer, and pass it over to him.  Usually, I stare at him while he eats it.  Ask him over and over again what he thinks.  I eat vicariously, and he, bless him, is as tolerant of me as I am intolerant of the chicken.

I am particularly pleased with this Valentine: bone-in chicken marinated overnight in crème fraîche, woodsy herbs, shallots, and garlic.  The rosemary, thyme, shallot, and garlic permeate the crème fraîche and eventually the chicken.  And the crème fraîche, like buttermilk, tenderizes the chicken so it is soft, juicy beyond belief.  The crème fraîche on the skin causes it to bubble up, char, and blister.  But the inside remains pale, perfumed, and perfect.  I serve it with green salad, baguette.  It’s homey.

Because if you’re married to a food blogger, you eat your Valentine’s dinner at 11 AM the weekend before (perfect lighting, perfect timing), I already stared at him, asked him what he thought, and ate vicariously through him.  I have to say, I never feel more like a wife than when I am roasting chicken for my husband.  Maybe it’s because of the level of sacrifice in it for me.  After all, at least half the joy of cooking is the payoff of eating.  Maybe it’s because it’s my own extreme version of Engagement Chicken.  Maybe there’s just something primal-ly, traditionally devoted about roasting one’s man a chicken.  I don’t know.  But he smiled, and I smiled, and I thought, I am lucky to have someone to love so much that I would make him this homey chicken.

Maybe next year I’ll cave and make him chicken soup.

Bon app!

Creme Fraiche Chicken Legs - Marinade

Homey Crème Fraîche Baked Chicken
serves 4

Creme Fraiche Baked ChickenINGREDIENTS

  • 4 whole chicken legs or chicken breasts, skin-on and bone-in
  • Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
  • 1 cup of crème fraîche
  • 1 large shallot, roughly chopped
  • 4 cloves of garlic, barely chopped
  • The leaves from 2 sprigs of rosemary
  • 2 tablespoons of fresh thyme leaves
  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil

METHOD

Salt and pepper all sides of the chicken.  In a baking dish that will hold the chicken in a single layer, toss together the crème fraîche, shallot, garlic, rosemary, and thyme, and season the marinade with salt and pepper.  Add the chicken and toss, making sure the crème fraîche gets all over every bit of the chicken.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Preheat the oven to 375 F.  Lightly grease a rimmed baking sheet.  Turn the chicken over in the marinade once last time to coat thoroughly, and place in a single layer on the baking sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Bake 30 minutes (a little longer if using chicken breasts) until the internal temperature is 150 F.  Then crank up the oven to 500 F and bake until the skin puffs up and turns golden brown, about 5 more minutes.  Serve with a light green salad and baguette.print this recipe
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Categories: Cheap, Easy, Eat, Main Courses, Poultry, Recipes
 

Bonafide Heirloom Carrot, Carrot, and Chive Slaw

RECIPE: Bonafide Heirloom Carrot, Carrot, and Chive Slaw

Carrot Fennel Chive SlawI am devoted to slaw.  If it’s on a menu, I order it.  And I make it constantly, in huge batches, and use it to stuff tacos, to top burgers, as a salad bed under steak or pork or grilled fish.  It’s so lively.  The crunch.  The mixture of all those different things, getting along, being better than the sum of their parts.  And while I adore cabbage (I mean, I really ADORE it), slaw isn’t just for cabbage anymore.

I was at the supermarket Monday night, thinking to take something healthy with me to the office for lunch, when I saw a bag of pre-shredded rainbow heirloom carrots.  It felt very Brooklyn meets the Upper East Side, so I snapped it up.  It was destined for a slaw.  So I bought a giant fennel and some chives that I would cut in long spears to round out the vegetables.  Then I tossed it with my simple slaw dressing that I always use: lemon juice and zest tossed with olive oil and mayo.  And because I like doing things a bit vegan now and again, I went for Vegenaise to be extra virtuous.

It’s such a becoming slaw, with all its paleness punctuated by the bright shards of carrots.  It’s the perfect match of crunchiness and that slight wilt that lemon juice gives.  It’s just terrific.  I hope you try it!

Carrot Fennel Chive Slaw CollageBon app!

Bonafide Heirloom Carrot, Carrot, and Chive Slaw
serves 4 to 8, depending on how you use it

Carrot Fennel Chive SlawINGREDIENTS

  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise or Vegenaise for a vegan version
  • The juice and zest of 1 lemon
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 10-ounce bag shredded carrots, preferably rainbow heirloom carrots
  • 1 large fennel, shaved on a mandoline, fronds chopped and reserved
  • ½ bunch chives, cut into 1 ½ - inch pieces

PROCEDURE

In a large bowl, whisk together the olive oil, mayonnaise or Vegenaise, lemon juice and zest, and salt and pepper until smooth.  Then toss in the carrots, fennel and fronds, and chives.  Toss thoroughly to coat.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour, and up to overnight, before serving.  You could serve right away, but letting the fennel and carrots sit in the lemon juice and salt helps to extract some of the vegetables’ juices and wilt just enough of the crunch out to make it the perfect slaw texture.print this recipe
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Categories: 15 Minutes, Cheap, Easy, Eat, Recipes, Salad, Sides, Soup & Salad, Vegetables, Vegetarian
 

Greek Turkey Meatballs with Chobani Jalapeño and Mint Tzatziki

RECIPE: Greek Turkey Meatballs with Chobani Jalapeño and Mint Tzatziki

Chobani Turkey Meatballs and TzatzikiI am a really bad eater of breakfast.  I just don’t really like breakfast food.  So when I say that I eat anything with consistency before noon, it’s a big statement.  I have been a devotee of Chobani for about a year and a half.  It started when I had a bug and couldn’t eat anything.  The doctor recommended yogurt and the blended Chobani flavors appealed enough to give me a bit of appetite.  Later and back in London, I would stop in the little Tesco’s on my way to work in Hammersmith and pick up a blood orange Chobani.  I liked its consistency with my life back in New York, and I also loved the pulpy blood orange tang.  And now that I’m back stateside, I raid Fairway’s shelves for limited batch pumpkin spice Chobani.  I stir in my salty Early Bird granola and it’s a breakfast I actually eat.  In fact, I had it this morning!

So when Chobani told me about their #MadeWithChobani project, I figured I owed them for being one of my few suppliers for the most important meal of the day.

The truth is, in addition to little flavored pots for breakfast, I love using Greek yogurt in savory recipes.  I use it as a substitute for sour cream, crème fraiche, and mayonnaise in so many dishes.  You get the benefit of less fat and less cholesterol, plus healthy bacteria for your digestive system.  I mix in mashed avocado and lime juice and dollop on tacos.  I stir in horseradish or herbs and smear on sandwiches.  I use it to finish soups.  It’s a really basic ingredient that I always have on hand.

Chobani CollageHere I use it to make a twist on a classic tzatziki, a Greek sauce my cousin in Montreal made for me when I was sixteen, and I have been hooked ever since.  Traditionally, tzatziki is made from yogurt, cucumber, and garlic, and it’s the perfect dip for stacks of warm grilled pitas.  But Chobani did as for unique and healthy, so here’s my spin.  I make a cool – hot version by adding jalapenos, fresh mint, and Meyer lemon to the traditional tzatziki.  I spoon it onto a bed of lemon-marinated baby kale, and top it with my Greak turkey mini meat balls, stuffed with oregano, mint, dill, parsley, and garlic, and made tender with whole wheat couscous.  It’s a great light dinner, but today, I ate it for lunch al desko.

So that’s my #MadeWithChobani recipe.  Savory, light, hopefully a little different—and really, really easy and good.

Chobani Pumpkin

Greek Turkey Meatballs with Chobani Jalapeño and Mint Tzatziki
serves 4

Chobani Turkey Meatballs and TzatzikiMeatballs

INGREDIENTS
  • 1 pound ground turkey
  • 1/2 cup cooked whole wheat couscous
  • 1 tablespoon freshly chopped of each: oregano, dill, parsley, mint
  • 3/4 teaspoon dried oregano (optional)
  • 1-2 gloves garlic, grated
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.  In a large bowl, mix all ingredients until just combined.  Use a small ice cream scoop to place uniform meatballs onto a baking sheet.  Bake until golden and cooked through, 25 - 30 minutes.

Tzatziki

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 cup Chobani Greek yogurt
  • 1/4 chopped chopped fresh mint
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
  • 1 jalapeno, seeded and roughly chopped
  • Zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
  • Salt
  • 1 Persian cucumber
METHOD Place all the ingredients except the cucumber in a small cucumber and whiz until completely blended.  Finely grate the cucumber onto a few layers of paper towel.  Wring out all the moisture and stir into the tzatziki. To serve, arrange a bed of baby kale tossed with equal parts lemon juice and olive oil.  Top with some tzatziki and nestle the turkey meatballs on top.print this recipe
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Categories: 30 Minutes, Appetizers & Hors D’Oeuvres, Cheap, Easy, Eat, For a Crowd, Main Courses, Poultry, Recipes