Ultimate Meatballs? A bold claim, but they are quite good!

(With apologies for a distinct lack of step by step photos; I was busy being birthday mum and host whilst all this was going on!)

So, recently for Lola's birthday tea we had meatballs and tagliatelle, along with the aforementioned angel cake, and regular readers of this blog will know that my children have never met a meatball they didn't like. I was looking for something completely different when I happened across this recipe, but I was, like, goaded into cooking these because of the extraordinary claim: Ultimate meatballs? Seriously? Will I ever want another meatball recipe after this one? Well, actually they really are rather nice and whilst I will seek out other meatball recipes, it does not mean that I don't rate these. It just means that I am a curiously annoying and inquisitive cook.

This is a recipe adapted from the one by Tyler Florence who I know little about, save for him being an American chef. The success of this dish has encouraged me to seek out some of his others. My tweak was to put a little mozzarella into the centre of the meatball.

Ultimate Meatballs with Pomodoro Sauce and Tagliatelle, adapted from Ultimate Spaghetti and Meatballs by Tyler Florence

Serves Mum, Dad, Lola and Finn and four others.

Ingredients
(Measured in cups, as it is an American recipe)

For the Pomodoro Sauce:

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, chopped

4 tins chopped tomatoes

1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces

salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the meatballs:

Extra-virgin olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, smashed

2 tablespoons roughly chopped fresh parsley leaves

1 cup milk

4 thick slices firm white bread, crust removed

1 1/2 pounds ground beef (mince)

1 1/2 pounds ground pork (mince)

1 large egg (I used two medium ones)

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for serving

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

A ball of mozzarella cheese, cut into chunks

Leaves from 3 sprigs fresh basil or parsley

To serve:

1 pound spaghetti, or pasta of your choice.

Method:

Make your Pomodoro (tomato) sauce. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until the vegetables are soft, 4 to 5 minutes.

Carefully add the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the sauce is thick, about 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, stirring for a few minutes with a wooden spoon to further break up any tomatoes. Reduce the heat and let simmer for 20 to 25 minutes. Stir in the fresh basil and season again. Set aside until required.

Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil for the spaghetti.

Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a frying pan over a medium heat.

Add the onion, and cook until it is soft but still translucent, about 10 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and let cool.

Pour enough milk over the bread in a bowl to moisten and let it soak while the onions are cooling. 

Combine the meats in a large bowl. Add the egg and Parmesan and season generously with salt and pepper. Use your hands to squeeze the excess milk out of the bread and add that to the bowl along with the cooled onion mixture. 

Gently combine all the ingredients with your hands or with a spoon until just mixed together. Don't overwork or the meatballs will be tough. Test for seasoning. I fry off a little of the mixture to check for seasoning before I begin to roll the meat into balls.

When you're happy with the seasoning, roll the meat into balls, placing a little piece of mozzarella into the centre of each ball.

Heat some olive oil in the frying pan over medium heat and brown the meatballs on all sides, until cooked through. This will depend on the size of your balls, as it were, but my walnut sized ones took about 10 - 15 mninutes.

When the meatballs are cooked, combine the meatballs and the sauce together. Keep warm.

Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti or whatever pasta you are using in the boiling water until al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain and put it onto a large serving platter. Spoon the meatballs on top of the spaghetti and garnish with basil leaves if you like, or parsley. 

Serve immediately along with extra cheese and any sauce you have left over.

A little bit of France and using up stuff from cupboards - Chicken and Puy Lentils

I bought lentils ages ago for a soup that I didn't make, and they have been there, making me feel guilty every time I open the cupboard. I had to use them up really, but soup wasn't what I was thinking of, although I tell you if you look outside here today you would think that is was Autumn. Dreadfully windy, cold and British summer like. Typical soup weather. No wonder I spend from May to September in a bad mood.

Anyway, I had passed over the chicken and lentil idea forever for some misguided reason that I wouldn't be too keen on it. Wrong. I never really understood how lentils are able to hoover up the delicious flavours of whatever you put with them. Puy lentils pleasingly keep their shape and provide texture as well as great flavour, and they accompany chicken so well. And, it filled me up, and the kids, who after major reservations about the what the dish looked like (let's face it, lentils are never going to win the beauty contest for pulses; the black eyed pea is a shoe in for that particular title if you ask me) made good attempts with Lola, not unsurprisingly, making the best attempt and Finn, giving it his best shot, which involves a few minutes pushing it around the plate before eating some of it. I would make it for them again, because really there is nothing not to like.

Anyway, Puy lentils, I salute you all, every last one of you. 

Chicken with Puy Lentils

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad

Ingredients

225g/8oz Puy Lentils

3 tbsp olive oil

6 boneless chicken thighs

125g/4½oz pancetta or bacon lardons, cubed

300ml/1/2 pint chicken stock

1 leek, trimmed, finely diced

2 carrots peeled, finely diced

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

chopped parsley

Method:

Cook the Puy lentils according to packet instructions, then drain.

Season the chicken. Then, using about half of the oil in a frying pan over a low heat, cook the chicken thighs, turning them over from time to time to ensure even cooking. Mine were boneless and took about 15 minutes or so, but pierce the meat to check for clear juices to ensure that the chicken is cooked through.

Remove the chicken thighs from the pan and set aside to rest for 5 minutes. Keep them warm.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in the same frying pan and fry the pancetta for 5 minutes, or until browned.

Add the leek and carrot for 8-10 minutes, or until softened.

Stir in the cooked lentils and the chicken stock. Simmer the mixture for 2-3 minutes, or until the vegetables are completely tender.

To serve, spoon the lentils into wide bowls and top with the chicken thighs whole or sliced.

Enjoy!

Recipes on the road - Motor home chicken with lemon, thyme and garlic

Phill has acquired a motor home and whilst the appeal of the road opening up in front of us and travelling into the sunset has a romantic appeal, and stirs a little something in this particular trucker's daughter, the slumming it of some aspects of 'camping' does not. Confined spaces, temperamental showers and traffic queues are some of the things that irritate me, but the things I can affect, I will, and that is the food.

Early camping adventures and a lack of interest in cooking meant that the one ring I had to make good with led to an amazing level of consumption of hot dogs, but armed with a little more culinary skill and not one, but three rings and an oven means that dinner out of tins will be seldom this time around.

Our first adventure with the motor home was to France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and whilst there are many reasons to love, and then be irritated with, France, one of the things I adore is after landing in Calais is making my way to the Carrefour or the Auchan and stocking up on French food, and whilst I know that the food they sell is not really a patch on the fresh produce you can acquire at the market in France, it is still superior to a lot of the stuff you can buy on our side of the channel, so with that in mind I stocked up on chicken, veal (hard to get in the UK really) and other niceties to lengthy to mention here.

Chicken. I bought chicken legs, which were reasonably priced and reassuringly tinged with yellow and had a notion that I would marinate them in thyme, garlic and lemon then roast them off. The oven, not being furnace like and therefore giving a longer cooking time, would result in the meat coming away easily from the bones. The quality of the chicken meant the end result was tasty, succulent and gorgeous. I made the marinade in the morning and coated the chicken legs with it, rubbing it into the skin and then covering and putting in the fridge, taking it out and turning the meat over when I remembered. Then it was just a case of placing on an oven tray and letting the oven do it's thing. Marginally more effort than opening a tin of hot dogs, but not much.

I served this with potatoes and salad. Lola, Finn and Phill served me clean plates. First motor home meal = success!

Chicken Legs with Lemon, Thyme and Garlic

Served Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad

Ingredients:

3 - 4 chicken legs, depending on size.

50ml olive oil

2 fat cloves of garlic

1 large lemon, some of the pith removed with a peeler, plus the juice

2 tsp dried thyme

plenty of salt and pepper (I used a tsp of salt and half a tsp of black pepper)

Method

Mix all the ingredients for the marinade in a suitable bowl or container.

Place the chicken into the marinade. You might like to slash the flesh of the chicken to allow the flavours to penetrate further. Rub the marinade over the chicken.

Cover the chicken and marinade, either with a lid or with cling film. Place in the fridge. Leave for at least a couple of hours but if you can leave it for about 8 hours, then all's well and good.

Remove the chicken from the marinade and place onto an oven tray. Any remaining marinade (and there should be very little) should be rubbed over the chicken.

Place in the oven and cook until the chicken, when pierced with a knife at the thickest part, reveals a volcano of clear juices. In a normal oven at 180c, about 40 - 45 minutes probably. For us, with this oven, it took about an hour and 10 minutes.

Serve with whatever accompaniment you like to happy children and partner. Enjoy!

Jubilee food fit for a Queen, or in my case 'Princess Lola' and 'Prince Finn'. Eton Mess

Well, despite my mix of origins, not all English, or indeed British, I would be being a disloyal subject if I didn't broach the subject of the Jubilee in this blog (though I am really quite traitorous in that I am buggering off to France today for a few days, though I am back for Jubilee Tuesday, so I am not beyond reproach totally) so, out of the possibles that one could cite as British food I decided on Eton Mess for several reasons, not least because it is easy, it's quick, and if you are doing one of these street party things, quite simple to upscale for a crowd.

I am not really sure there is a quintessential recipe for Eton Mess, seeing as it is basically meringue, cream and fruit (usually strawberries/raspberries) it's not difficult to figure our how to do it, and if you are doing it for yourself or others you know, you decide on how sweet/crunchy/creamy/fruity you want it to be. Some people mix it up, some people layer it, some people add stuff, so don't think of the recipe below as some kind of panacea, 'cos it ain't. It's just my way of doing things.

I haven't faffed much with the traditional concoction of the recipe, being somewhat of a Luddite when it comes to the old faithful recipes, being that they have stood the test of time because they are great as they are, but I will explain my notion behind doing things.

Firstly, summer fruit in this country can be gorgeous or tasteless. Strawberries taste of nothing sometimes and are in dire need of va va voom, and strawberries straight from the fridge are vile, so ensure your fruit is at room temperature before you start. I am not overly keen on raspberries that can be a bit sour, and for that reason I tend to blitz them with a squeeze of orange juice and some sugar to create a sauce that mingles with the cream, the meringue and the strawberries.

Some people sweeten the cream. I don't. I think there is enough sweetness from meringue and fruit, but if you could add a little icing sugar and vanilla extract to the cream if you want to.

Sometimes life is too short to make your own meringues, particularly when you can buy those natty little mini meringues that are crisp on the outside and gooey on the inside. So I buy them.

Lastly, I layer. Personally I think mixing it all up is a 'mess' too far, and so I like the idea of the fruit being revealed, if you like. But it's a personal thing.

So, here goes...

Eton Mess

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum, Dad and two others.

Ingredients:

Large punnet of good quality strawberries (about 454g/1lb)

Small punnet of raspberries (227g/ 1/2lb)

A squeeze of orange juice

2 - 3 tbsp caster sugar

600ml double cream

About 10 - 12 mini meringues

Method:

Halve and hull the strawberries,

In a mini chopper blitz the raspberries with a squeeze of orange juice and some of the sugar. Once blitzed, taste and add more sugar if necessary. You could add a few strawberries too if you wish.

In a mixer, or similar, whip up the cream. Once it reaches soft to firm peaks, turn off the mixer.

Crumple the meringues into the cream. Mix carefully to combine.

To assemble, put some fruit at the bottom of the glass, top with the cream, add some raspberry sauce, then more fruit, cream, sauce, etc. I top them with the remaining mini meringues.

Really nice. Really.

Al Fresco food: Spanish kebabs with patatas bravas

Food just tastes better outside. I don't know if this can (or should) be scientifically proven and I don't know if it is really down to the food, but there's something about eating outside which never gets old. Even on a cold, cold day, the mug of soup that you hold in your hands to thaw your fingers tastes more like it is doing you the world of good than sat inside drinking it. It's a more satisfying experience, for me, anyway.

Luckily this is not about cold weather food, for Summer was well and truly ensconced chez Lola and Finn (and indeed the whole of Blighty) this weekend. Whilst the neighbours were giving their guests food poisoning at impromptu barbecues, I decided to cook these kebabs on the griddle inside, not because I don't trust Phill and his barbecue skills (for he is really rather good) but because we were woefully ill prepared in the barbecue and charcoal department. Whilst it might have been nice to have had these sizzling away outside whilst I was busy doing other things, I still think these were tasty, and more importantly Lola and Finn agreed wholeheartedly. The fact of the matter is that I will eat most things, and Lola and Finn won't. Clean plates signifies a massive thumbs up.

I am in the process of clearing out the freezer and using up the stuff that has been in there for longer than it probably should have been. A scour of the back of the freezer revealed turkey breast chunks and some pouting fillets. I figured that with a marinade to juzz them up, a nice salad and some accompanying patatas bravas, this would be a meal that would make room in the freezer and make us feel content and very summery. Success all round.

Spanish kebabs with Patatas Bravas

For the marinade:

3 fat garlic cloves, peeled and chopped finely

1 tbsp pimenton (paprika). I used 'picante' for a little heat

1 tsp of thyme

1 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2 bay leaves

1 tbsp chopped parsley (I used the stalks - more flavour!)

30ml red wine or sherry vinegar

30ml good olive oil

I marinaded 400g turkey breast chunks and 350g of pouting (cut into chunks) with this amount of marinade. You can obviously pick the meat/fish of your choice

Skewers, soaked in water.

In addition, I used some red onion and cherry tomatoes on my kebabs

For the Patatas Bravas:

500g good quality new potatoes. I used Exquisa, a waxy yellow variety

A couple of glugs of olive oil

salt and black pepper

A tin of chopped tomatoes

a few dashes of tabasco sauce

pinch of chilli flakes (or to taste)

1 tsp pimenton picante

1 tbsp red wine or sherry vinegar

Method:

Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a suitable non reactive bowl.

Add your marinade to the meat. (I marinaded the different meats separately). Marinade for a few hours at least.

If you are using bamboo skewers, soak them in water for a few minutes to  ensure that they don't set on fire whilst on the griddle.

To make the Patatas Bravas: Peel and chopped the potatoes into even sized pieces, between 1 and 2 cm in size.

Put into a roasting tin and then add olive oil. Coat the potatoes thoroughly in the mix and then liberally apply salt and pepper. Give the potatoes a quick stir once again. Place in a hot oven (220c) for about 25 minutes or until the potatoes yield easily when pierced and are beginning to colour a little at the edges. Give the tin a shake a couple of times during cooking to ensure that the potatoes are evenly cooked.

Start to cook the bravas sauce whilst the potatoes are in the oven. Pour the tinned tomatoes into a sauce pan, add some salt and pepper and cook on a high heat until the tomatoes have reduced a little and the sauce has thickened perceptibly. Add the other ingredients, stir to combine and continue to simmer the sauce for a further 10 minutes or so. Taste for seasoning. The sauce should be tomatoey with a latent kick.

Whilst the potatoes are cooking, assemble and cook your kebabs. Thread the meat onto the skewers, ensuring that each piece of meat is of a similar size so that the kebabs cook evenly.  I alternated by putting meat, then vegetable.

Place the kebabs onto a hot griddle. You might need to add a smear of oil to the griddle so that the kebabs don't stick. Also bear in mind if you have a combination of meat and fish, that fish will cook far quicker and meat will need to rest. Cook the meat ones first, and cook the fish ones whilst your meat kebabs are resting.

Rotate the kebabs to ensure even cooking. My turkey breast kebabs took about 8 - 10 minutes to cook, the fish, about 5 minutes.

Plate up the kebabs, transfer the patatas into a bowl and either pour the sauce over the patatas or, if you have smaller ones, serve the sauce separately. Lola and Finn adore these potatoes without sauce, not unsurprisingly. The bravas sauce is for the grown ups really.

Enjoy!