First things First! Meat!
I marinated my Pork loin over night! The next morning I threw it in a crock pot and let it cook on low all day! It was perfectly done and tender by dinner.
Greek Pork Loin
I used 1 medium sized pork loinMarinade:
1/4 cup Olive Oil
1/4 cup fresh Lemon Juice (use a little less if you use "real lemon" liquid)
1 tsp Basil or oregano or favorite herb (I've used sage cause I had it fresh)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp pepper
6 clove of garlic finely minced
-----for later-----
1/4 cup of Greek yogurt
1/2 cup of chicken stock
Rinse and pat dry pork loin. Throw in a Ziploc bag with the first 6 ingredients and mix well.
Let marinade overnight. Put that bad boy marinade and all in the crock pot the next day and cook on low for about 4-5 hours. Remove loin and slice. Add yogurt and chicken stock to marinade crock pot, whisk, and return loin. Cook about another hour and a half till it's falling apart! Mummmm yum yum yum! The kids ate it over rice, but I put it right into my Falafel salad! It was yumtastic as my son says!
Make your Tzatziki sauce next so it can rest for a hour or two before dinner
Tzatziki Sauce
1 large English cucumber (or 2 large regular cucumbers but see note below)
3 cups Greek yogurt
1-2 cloves of garlic finely minced (we like garlic :)... and use 2 heaping scoops of minced)
1 tbs salt
3 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs olive oil (cold press is best)
1 tbs fresh chopped dill (or 1 & 1/2 tsp dried)
Okay if you are using English cucumbers, peel and throw them in the food chopper and get chopping. You can skip to the next paragraph! Yea! If you can't find English cucumbers and are using regular ones, peel and cut in half. Scoop out most of the seedy middles. This helps eliminate some of the water content. Sprinkle them with salt and let them rest for 30 minutes to and hour to draw out excess water. Be sure to wipe off salt before adding to the food processor.
After you've chopped your cucumber, add everything but the dill. Process til it looks like salad dressing. Stir in the dill and let set in the fridge till dinner. This lets the flavors get stronger! I promise it will taste awesome after you let it sit for a bit!
Time to make the Falafel
Gluten Free Falafel
2 cans of chick peas2 heaping tsp of chopped garlic
1 large onion
3 tsp cumin
3 tsp coriander
1 tsp cayenne (or I substitute chili powder for the kids)
4-6 tbs almond flour (if you don't care about gluten just use regular flour)
3 tbs fresh parsley or cilantro
Oil for frying
Okay, so I have been told you never use a food processor for falafels... But lets face it. Sometimes you just don't have the patience for hand chopping. If you decide to finely mince everything by hand you will not need the flour. If you are like me and decided to use a food processor, do your chick peas first. I try to somewhat cut up the garlic and onion before throwing it in with the chickpeas. Add the spices and flour by hand. Shape into patties like a crab cake. I have found smaller patties work better and don't break apart. I also discovered that you really don't need much oil. The more oil you have the more they tend to fall apart. We used an oil mix consisting of coconut oil, butter, and olive oil. Just because I couldn't decide which to use and thought "why not use them all?" The coconut gave them a great flavor, but would have been too strong on its own. Use what ever oil you have on hand! Or you could bake them, though I haven't tried this yet, but heard great things about it! If you bake them let me know how it goes!
Once you are done... Put on a huge bed of spring greens and lettuce (I mean real lettuce, not iceberg) and spoon the Tzatziki sauce over. Mummm! It will be awesome I promise!
