Leftover Vegetable Kofta

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I love good Kofta, those delicious spiced spheres from Indian cooking.  There are many different versions, of course, and I’ve tasted some wonderful personalized recipes (one local restaurant uses rasins).  I never tried making any until now

I came up with this after realizing that making vegetable broth meant that I wasted vegetables, so I began exploring recipes.  I realized that vegetarian kofta, which are basically balls of vegetables and flour, would be perfect to make use of these leftovers.  Plus I’ll look for any excuse to use chickpea flour, which is just amazing stuff.

These came out pretty good.  This is the second time I’ve tried this, and though they’re a bit chewy, there’s definitely something here.

One note is that I’d pick out most herbs if you use a bunch of them. Some are powerful, some taste bad if there’s too much, some may trigger allergies en masse, some are so loaded with specific vitamins that they may not be good for people taking supplements, and so on.  Parsley and peppercorns (which I both use in my vegetable broth) are stuff you want to watch out for.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups of pureed, boiled vegetables (you may be able to use cooked vegetables and roasted vegetables with a little broth or water). Be sure to pick out most herbs if you used any.  This is 2 cups after being pureed, by the way.  The more different vegetables the better, and you could probably use leftovers pretty easy.
  • 3 cups of chickpea flour.
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp ground coriander.
  • 1 tbsp garlic (two if you used no garlic in the recipe)
  • 1 tbsp curry powder or garam masala
  • 2 Tbsp baking powder.
  • Olive oil (or good nostick pans)

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400. Use a towel/cloth to lightly coat small muffin tins with oil. You’ll want enough to make 18-24.
  2. Puree vegetables in a blender/food processor. The mixture should be reasonably thick
  3. Pour the vegetable puree into a bowl. Slowly stir in the chickpea flour bit by bit, sprinkling it on the mixture (about ¼ a cup at a time), stirring, and repeating. This is needed as chickpea flour can lump up easily – with the last ¼ cup, stir in the baking powder.
  4. After stirring in the chickpea flour there may be lumps. I use a large spoon to mash the mixture against the side, stir it in, and repeat.
  5. Place about 1-2 tablespoons of the mixture in each muffin hollow. You should get around 18-24.
  6. Place in oven and cook for 8 minutes.
  7. Remove the tins and use chopsticks to flip each kofta over. Place back in oven for another 5 minutes.

 

I want to tweak the spices a bit, probably add one more tablespoon of baking powder, and a bit more chickpea flour to make sure the dough is less sticky – turning these over was tough.  Probably much like bread dough you can just add a bit here and there until it’s more powdery than sticky.

I want to try these with my various sauces . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Job Basics: The Goal

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goal soccer ball

So, where does your career/job life start? Where does it all begin? With a Goal of what you want to do and what you want to be. Note this doesn’t have to be what you want to be when you grow up, since I’m not sure I’ve grown up yet. It just has to be something you’re reaching for now or in the near future.

Having a goal that you truly want, that you “get”, that you feel viscerally directs you. You know why you’re reaching for it. You have the drive to propel you. You develop an almost instinctive understanding of what you’re trying to achieve.

You start with where you want to end up and figure out what to do to get there – the first Job Basic is knowing where your want to go.

Here’s what that consists of.

Read more

Job Basics: Welcome To The Careerodome

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Sunrise

“One might ask what is the point of repeating these banalities. The answer is that it is important to keep on repeating them, again and again, because these are banalities we often find it convenient to forget; and if we forget them, and they fall into oblivion, we will be condemning our culture, that is to say ourselves, to ultimate and irrevocable ruin.” – Leszek Kolakowski

Awhile ago I was coaching a friend on her job search. After giving her some advice she thanked me. I noted it was basic advice, and thus thanking me was no big deal, and she said it may be but no one told her.

That issue has haunted me – how can such basic advice be something people miss? How is it people don’t know even the basics of the job search and career? Excuse me, but who the hell is teaching them and ignoring the job basics?

The more I examined this, the more I saw such ignorance cutting across lines of gender, ethnicity, education and region. Wether we get no advice, or overspecialized advice, or bad advice, it seems far too many people just don’t know how the job search and the career works. This has a severe impact on what people can do – on top of all the other economic problems they face.

Who was teaching them? Apparently no one, or not the right people.

I’m now understanding why my ranting about “all these job books say the same thing” was ignorant. Those who write on job search advice have to repeat the basics since there’s a good chance people haven’t heard of the basics. Having written a few job books, I’m realizing this “repeating the basics” is a miserable truth of giving advice.

I feel like i owe some authors of books I haven’t read an apology. Sorry folks.

Anyway, my previous ranting aside, I realized what I had to do.

It’s time to talk the basics of the job search – getting ideas, career planning, searching, etc. I’m going to detail the essentials to help people, get them to think, give me something to show others, and do something.

Of course it’s skewed to the readers of this site – members of the geekosphere – but it fits most anyone.

It’s time let’s gear up over the days and weeks to come and talk basics. Let’s get your feedback as well, because I want to make something I can hand other people and help them out.

So I can write about something else. For now.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.