ScandItalian Meatballs in Spicy Tomato Sauce

These are a weird scanditalian fusion that I made up when I couldn't think what I was going to cook for dinner. These would work just as well with pasta as they did in a baguette. They're easy, cheap and really tasty.

You need about 250g of beef mince (half a pack) to feed two greedy adults. First finely dice a yellow onion, a couple of celery stalks and a carrot and fry them gently with a crushed clove of garlic until they are soft. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Split this mixture, removing half to a bowl and leaving the other half on the heat. Add the mince to the vegetables in the bowl and season with salt, pepper and a generous sprinkle of ground allspice. Mix up by hand and form into little balls, lay these on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and pop in the oven for about 20-30 minutes until cooked all the way through.

Add a tin of chopped tomatoes to the vegetables still in the frying pan, a squeeze of tomato puree, a capful of vodka, salt, sugar, pepper and a finely chopped, deseeded chilli. Let it come to a bubble and then leave to simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in a generous amount of finely chopped parsley and basil.

When the meatballs are done mix them into the tomato sauce and pop the baguettes, sliced lengthwise, under a hot grill to toast up. Butter the baguettes, fill them with the saucy meatballs and enjoy - eat them with your hands, it's much more fun than cutlery.

Spicy beef with Chinese pancakes & wasabi mayo

I was a bit lost as to what to make for a tasty Saturday night dinner. I knew I had a couple of beautiful organic rump steaks in the fridge though, so I flicked through a few recipe books and happened past a spicy beef stir fry recipe in Ching He Huang's Chinese Cookery. She suggested that it could be served with traditional chinese pancakes but didn't provide a recipe, so I went searching on the nets and found one on BBC GoodFood, which I adapted to my tastes. The pancakes were relatively simple in this recipe, although I did see more complicated ones.

I used a cup of mostly plain flour topped up with wholemeal, plus a teaspoon of caster sugar and 100ml of boiling water to bring it together. I kneaded it for a bit and then covered it in clingfilm and left it to rest for a while.

I then patted down my rump steaks with kitchen paper and sliced them, across the grain, quite thinly. I heated up a dry frying pan and added a couple of tbsp of cumin, one of dried chillies, a large pinch of salt and lots of freshly ground pepper. When they smelled wonderful I took them off the heat and coated the beef in them.



I settled down and de-podded my broad beans - all picked fresh from the garden which makes me smile, I've never grown broad beans before and these look great! A quick blanching for a few minutes and they were easy to shell. I also made up some wasabi mayonnaise, using 3 tbsp of mayonnaise, 1 tsp of wasabi powder, 1 tbsp of water and seasoned with caster sugar and a little salt. I chopped up fresh cucumber to go with the meal.

Then it was back to the pancakes, these are much easier than I thought they were going to be and came out perfectly first time. The dough needs to be divided into eight little balls, then two at a time, squish them a little flat and then brush one with sesame oil. Place a second one on top and, coating with flour, roll the two together until they form one really thin pancake. Keep going until you've made four.



Heat up a dry frying pan until very hot, then lay a pancake in for a minute, flip it and cook for another minute. Switch it for another pancake and while that one's cooking, find the seam where the two peices of dough were rolled together and pick them apart to make two wafer thin pancakes. Pop them onto a plate, under a damp teatowel. When you've made all the pancakes put them, still wrapped in the damp towel, into the oven on it's very lowest setting.

Back to the spicy beef: heat up a pan with a couple of tablespoons of oil in and stir fry the beef for a couple of minutes. Add 3 tbsp of light soy sauce and a teaspoon of shaoxing rice wine or sherry. When the beef is almost cooked, add a few sliced spring onions, the shelled broad beans and some chopped coriander.


LINKS
Ching He Huang's Website
BBC GoodFood Homepage

 

Sunday Burgers

What do you do with half a pack of mince, the first radish from the garden and a hungry husband? Burgers. Easy-to-make comfort food.

First of all I made the salad, because it's nicer if it has some time to chill before you eat it. I did take the mince out of the fridge though, to give it a chance to come up to room temperature.

Finely slice half a fennel bulb, half a cucumber and a bunch of radishes. Mix them up with chopped mint and parsley, salt and pepper, olive oil and a couple of capfuls of white wine vinegar (or lemon juice). Stash in the fridge while you make the burgers.

Finely slice some purple onion and pop it in a hot frying pan with a light sprinkling of sugar. Don't stir much, just leave them to caramelise. Mix the minced beef with a teaspoon or so each of soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, natural yoghurt and a sprinkling of chilli powder, cumin, salt and pepper, plus a small handful of chopped coriander. Once cooked, cool down the onions a bit and mix them in too. Form into patties and get the frying pan nice and hot.


Put the patties in to cook (hot, hot pan, and don't move them about) and slice your bread. While the bread is toasting, slice up some gherkins and a couple of thin slivers of mature cheddar.
Once it's toasted, put a dollop each of ketchup and mustard on one slice, topped with the cheddar, and some mayo and the gerkin slices on the other.

Portion out the salad and then lay the cooked burger patties on top of the cheese.

Fast. Naughty. Delicious.