Greek style feta kebabs with Mediterranean salad, tzatziki sauce and oven roasted root vegetables

This is a dinner that needs a lot of chopping but yields lots of food and lots of leftovers. The Greek style meatballs/kebabs recipe is adapted from here, called Grekiska fetafärsbiffar, but we changed the recipe. The original LCHF version turns out very dense and the kebabs get harder and harder in the fridge. The roots recipe is inspired from all over, it's called Rotsaker i ugn and is a swedish classic. The "Mediterranean salad" is also inspired from the LCHF recipe above.

Ingredients:

Meatballs:

• 1kg blandfärs (50-50 pork and beef mince mix)
• 1 finely chopped onion
• 3/4 cup breadcrumbs soaked in enough milk so it has the consistency of porrige
• 4 tsp ginger-garlic paste
• 250g feta cheese
• 3 tsp sumac
• 3-4 tsp thyme
• 3-4 tsp oregano
• 3 tsp salt
• 3 tsp pepper
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• Peel of one lemon, juice of one lemon (optional, essential if you're skipping the sumac)

Mediterranean salad:

• 1 cucumber, large dice
• 1 box cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2-1 red onion finely sliced (not too much onion or it overwhelms the salad)
• Olives, seedless (we used a half bottle, we like olives!)

Tzatziki sauce:

• 1 cup thick yogurt/ greek yogurt
• 1 garlic clove minced
• 2 tsp honey
• pinch of salt

Roots:

• All the root vegetables are cut into approximately the same size, like homefries or thick-cut fries
• 5-6 small potatoes
• 2-3 parsnips
• 2-3 beets
• 1/4 celeriac root
• 2-3 carrots
• 1 Rutabaga
• 10 garlic cloves, peeled
• Fat of choice (cooking oil/ olive oil/ coconut oil)
• Honey
• Dried thyme
• Salt
• Pepper

Recipe:

For the roots: 

1. Set the oven at 200C and chop all the vegetables
2. Chop the rutabaga, beets and celeriac root first and toss them in a bowl with honey, thyme, salt and pepper. These go in the oven 10-15 minutes before the rest of the vegetables.
3. Spread them on an oven tray and put them in the middle of the oven.
4. After 10-15 minutes add the rest of the vegetables adding more honey/ fat/ thyme/ salt/ pepper as needed.
5. Bake for 30-40 minutes (or until done).

For the Kebabs:

1. Soak the breadcrumbs in milk
2. In a large bowl, combine the meat, breadcrumbs, chopped onion, thyme, sumac, oregano, salt pepper, smoked paprika, ginger-garlic paste and crumble in the feta. 
3. Mix well.
4. Shape into flat patties about 3-4" diameter
5. Cook on a greased medium-hot pan. Cook on one side for 2-3 minutes, then flip and cook on the other side for another minute and then cover and cook for 4 minutes to cook through. 

For the Mediterranean Salad

1. Chop and mix all the ingredients together

For the Tzatziki sauce:

1. In a bowl, mix together all the ingredients and let sit for at least 20-30 minutes before eating

Mangal Kolgrill, Kista Galleria

We seem to have finally identified our favourite place to eat at Kista Galleria. It is called Mangal Kolgrill and the first dish we ate there inspired us to make a tabbouleh at home. We have gone back a couple of times and their pide (turkish pizza) is fantastic. We can speak knowledgeably having had eaten genuine pide in istanbul (one whole time, at the airport while on a layover, so we're real connoisseurs, see).

This time we tried their Mangal sampler with the bulgur salad.

They had a piece of chicken breast (very moist), two pieces of chop (probably lamb), two koftas and two other pieces that we think were beef, but honestly, everything was so delicious and well cooked that happy oblivion is fine with us. The bulgur salad was amazing, light and fresh as before. The side of bernaise sauce went unexpectedly well with all the meat. The dips in the bowl at the top were tzatziki, baba ganoush, hummus and some kind of red pepper yummy-ness. The grilled green pepper on the plate was absolutely delicious and frankly neither of us paid much attention to the bread because everything else was so good. And, of course, we finished with Ayran, which is refreshing and delicious.
Sorry, we actually forgot to take a picture before we dug in, so the plate looks a little chewed on already.

The food takes a little longer to come out than it does at other places in the food court, but from our vantage point it looked like each dish was being cooked to order and I guess this explains why their food is head and shoulders above the rest!