Sweet Chili and Garlic Un-Meatballs

It's always difficult to come up with a name for vegetarian loaf recipes, and of course just as difficult to come up with a name for their small round cousin the vegetarian meatball. You want a name that says what it is, but who wants a second helping of bean loaf or veggie balls??? I think that this recipe was a success in taste and name*, the fam agreed.


Ingredients:
3oz cream cheese (this is the binder, you could sub egg or a vegan preference)
1/4 cup sweet Thai chili sauce
4 cloves of garlic sliced
1/3 cup chopped green onion
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
2 cans of chickpeas
1/3 cup COOKED brown rice
salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil if pan frying

Stir together the first five ingredients in a medium sized mixing bowl. Mash in the chickpeas (this took quite a bit of work. I think next time I will run them through the food processor before adding them). Stir in the brown rice and add salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate this mixture for about an hour, this will make it easier to shape. Once done chilling, shape the mixture into balls and bake at 350 for ten minutes. After baking, I pan fried some of mine in a little olive oil for added fat and calories. The fried ones went to the kiddos. The hubster and I ate ours with a sauce of olive oil, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, and green onion that was reduced over medium low heat for about ten minutes.

*If I just put "un" and a hyphen in front of a word, that makes it a word....right?