One of my favorite recipes back when I first went vegetarian was for meatless kofte kebabs. It was from one of the first vegetarian cookbooks that I acquired, and I loved it. I have no idea what real kofte kebabs taste like, but I did some browsing of authentic kofte dishes and found a bunch of recipes for big hunks of meat on a stick. My vegetarian version was made from bulghur and a bunch of spices, rolled into little meatballs and cooked up on skewers. I could never quite manage to get a vegan version to work. I think some heavy duty egg is required to hold all those little grains together. So I decided to give chickpeas a try. I also seasoned up my vegan kofte kebabs quite a bit when compared to the version that I used to make. All these meat-based kofte recipes I browsed online had stuff like ginger, cinnamon and lots of cumin. I love all that stuff, so I threw it on in. The result was kind of falafel-ish, but honestly, better. All those spices make it delicious! Also, and this is why I’m sharing this recipe right before a big grilling holiday weekend, they’re on sticks. Grill friendly, though I cooked mine in the oven, in typical me fashion. (I do hope to break out the grill soon, but yesterday was seriously the first remotely warm day of the year where I live.)
