Chicken Kofta

I have made a little pact with myself to *try* not bake anything for the next 3 weeks because, in 4 weeks, I have to be able to fit into a wedding dress and not look like I eat cupcakes every day. What?! No! Okay...most days. Especially when my students do cooking in Home Ec and bring me the delicious things they bake (especially especially especially chocolate chip filled muffins that I am totally getting the recipe for). It's bad manners to turn down cake. 

So, to avoid any wedding day wardrobe malfunctions-bulging out in weird places-back cleavage scenarios, I have got to lay off the baked goods. 

Which actually makes me sad, not only because I will be missing out on my daily sugar binge but because I  LIKE to bake. It's my thing. Right now I seem to have very little control over many aspects of my life - my transfer, the wedding guest list, moving house, my timetable - but the one thing I can control is how many chochips and how much buttercream. 

To fill the void in my oven I am trying out a few new savoury things that are hopefully healthy as well. Tonight was Chicken Kofta. These probably didn't live up to my expectations because Lamb Kofta is just heaven on a stick. That said they were still delicious, I just had higher hopes. Fortunately a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce really helped boost them along.

Chicken Kofta
1/2 brown onion
1 garlic clove
1/3 cup pinenuts
1 tsp cumin
a collection of herbs...coriander, parsley etc..
600g chicken mince 
1 egg
1/2 cup couscous

Whaz the pinenuts into little chunks, dice the onion and combine with the garlic and the cumin. Fry this mixture on low heat until it smells delicious.

Whisk the egg in a large bowl, add the chicken, herbs and nut mixture and the couscous and mix to combine.

This will be a fairly sticky mixture but try the best you can to make sausage like shapes out of similar sized chunks of the mixture. Obviously you want them to cook evenly so similar size is good. Mine were about 10cm long. Lay the sausage shapes on a tray and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. 

This gives the mixture some time to become less sticky so once they are done take them out and reshape it you need to. Insert a skewer into the centre of the chicken sausage shapes and then grill. I actually put mine on a sandwich press which worked great and then popped them in the oven for about 15minutes just to ensure they were cooked through.

Serve with salad, greek yoghurt and sweet chilli sauce. - These also work amazingly for lunch the next day on a pita wrap.