The June Daring Cooks’ challenge sure kept us rolling – meatballs, that is! Shelley from C Mom Cook and Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to try meatballs from around the world and to create our own meatball meal celebrating a culture or cuisine of our own choice.
Meatballs especially ones dunked on top of pasta is a favourite in our family. So as expected I have already done quite a number of meatball recipes in this blog. There's our usual spaghetti meatballs, the soupy almondigas, the Spanish albondigas for tapas, even a sweet and sour meatballs. I've been wondering what to cook until I spied this Classic Beef Meatballs recipe from ABC News. Although our usual family meatballs is almost the same as other Italian-style meatballs around, this one had a significant variant in the form of ricotta cheese. That had got me all intrigued enough to try it. And I wasn't disappointed, the cheese made it very moist and soft. The golf ball-sized meatballs weren't to my liking, however. I like them smaller, easier to handle and bite - probably the size of a conker is best for me. So here is my adaptation of that classic beef meatballs.
Classic Beef Meatballs
1 kg minced beef (80% lean beef) 1 cup (250 g) ricotta cheese 1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs 2 eggs - slightly beaten 2 tsp sea salt 1/4 tsp crushed pepper flakes (optional) 1 tsp dried oregano 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley or 1 Tbsp dried 1 tsp minced garlic olive oil
*For the tomato sauce: 3 Tbsp olive oil 2 tsp minced garlic 1 medium onion - chopped 1/2 tsp dried oregano 4 x 400 g can of chopped tomatoes 2 tsp sea salt freshly ground pepper (to taste) 1 bay leaf 2 Tbsp double concentrate tomato puree (tomato paste)
*Do the tomato sauce first:
Saute the onion and garlic in olive in a heavy-bottomed saucepan on medium heat until the onion is translucent.
Add the oregano, ground pepper and sea salt. Cook for about 1-2 minutes.
Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, and bay leaf.
Bring to boil then lower heat to simmer for 1 hour (if making as sandwich filler) or just 10 minutes (if making for pasta) making sure to stir from time to time to avoid burning. Taste and add more salt if necessary or a little sugar if too sour.
*For the meatballs:
Grease a 13 x 9-inch metal baking pan generously with the olive oil. Preheat oven to 230°C/fan 210°C/450°F.
Mix all the other ingredients for the meatballs in a bowl. Combine well.
Shape into balls about the size of a conker (around 1 inch in diameter) making sure to pack the meat firmly. Arrange closely in the greased pan (they should be touching each other).
Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. A meat thermometer inserted in the middle should read 74°C/165°F.
Now, if you want this for sandwiches, spoon the tomato sauce on top of the meatballs and return to the oven for another 15 minutes.
If, however, you want this for pasta, pour all the roasted meatballs in the tomato sauce pot and continue simmering for 1 hour.
Our lovely Monkey Queen of Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys, was our May Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to dive into the world of en Croute! We were encouraged to make Beef Wellington, Stuffed Mushroom en Croute and to bring our kids into the challenge by encouraging them to create their own en Croute recipes!
I decided to go with the flow of the season and do a salmon covered in pastry since it's currently on sale! Even my stuffing is more spring-like: blended combination of spinach, watercress, and rocket (arugula). I used a combination of cream cheese and ricotta (left-over from another recipe). They were quite nice although I must say I was right in seasoning it well. Otherwise it comes across as too bland.
The BBC Good Food magazine provided me with the recipe to adapt to. This is so easy to make what with the ready-made puff pastry you can get from almost any supermarket. The only thing a bit hard is when moving the whole encased salmon from the assembly area to the baking pan. Otherwise, it was all a breeze frankly.
Salmon En Croute
500 g salmon fillet - skinned and deboned 500 g puff pastry 150 g mascarpone or cream cheese 100 g combined spinach, watercress and rocket 1 medium egg - beaten with 2 tsp milk
Combine the cream cheese and the watercress, spinach and rocket in a food processor and whizz until well mixed. Season well with sea salt. Set aside.
Heat the oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/375°F. Butter or oil a baking sheet.
Roll the pastry out to a size that will enclose the salmon completely, with a thickness of around 1/8 of an inch. Lay it on the prepared baking sheet (it will hang over the edges) and put the salmon in the middle. If it has a thinner tail end, tuck it under.
Put half of the cream cheese mixture on the salmon. Fold the pastry over to make a neat parcel. Trim the edges and seal with a fork or by crimping.
Make three slashes in the pastry to allow the steam to escape. Brush the pastry with the egg glaze.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until the pastry is crisp and browned. Dish up and serve with the rest of the watercress puree.
A few years' ago I was an eager participant to the Daring Baker's food blogging monthly event. It has now morphed into a Daring Kitchen which includes the Daring Cooks challenge. Well, I say the more the merrier! I wanted to get going again after a few years absence but since my big oven conked out months before, all I could participate in is the Daring Cooks challenge.
I love this month's one, deboning a whole chicken. I've always wanted to learn how to do it but always beaten back by procastination. So this kind of dare is the very thing to spur me on. This particular technique of Jacques Pepin, is the simpler one since the back of the chicken is cut open. Next time I hope to learn the more tricky way of deboning poultry without cutting the skin which is the one used in the Filipino chicken relleno or chicken gallantina.
How did I fare? Well, I watched the video at least three times to remember the techniques and the order of the steps. Going back and forth to the computer while my hands are soiled is not something I planned on doing. So after memorizing the process, the deboning itself was quite straight forward. It's the sliminess that I found difficult at times usually when I have to grab the bones. But other than that I must say it went quite well. What I found tricky was the tying of the string! I can't make it 'link' to one another. So I had to refer to the end of the video and had to see it several times. Jacques did it very quickly and I didn't notice at first that he turned his hand to twist the string!
I didn't make the sauce in the recipe and instead used my usual gravy one but included it here in case I'll have the chance to make it next time around. The stuffed, bound and tied chicken was brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with a little salt and pepper then roasted. I served this for our Easter family dinner and it went down quite well. There's something about slicing so easily into that chicken without worrying about bones that makes this so appealing. I'm definitely doing this again.
*Gravy Sauce: 1/3 cup water 1/2 cup dry red wine or chicken stock 1/2 cup diced celery stalk 1 small onion - diced 1/3 cup diced carrot 1/2 tsp potato starch or cornstarch/cornflour dissolved in 1 Tbsp water 1 Tbsp dark soy sauce 1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley melted butter
Preheat oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/400°F/gas mark 6.
Lay the deboned chicken skin side down and sprinkle the salt and pepper.
Spread the cooled stuffing mixture evenly over the chicken - stuffing the legs, too. If using the spinach stuffing, sprinkle the cheese and bread cubes on top of the spinach.
Roll the chicken up, tie it with kitchen string, brush with melted butter and place in a roasting pan.
Roast in the oven for about 45 mins - 1 hour or until the temperature in the centre of the chicken ballotine is 70°-74°C/160°-165°F. Check the chicken midway through the roasting time to see if it is browning too much in which case you can reduce the temperature to 190°C/fan 170°C/375°F/gas mark 5.
Remove from oven and lift from pan into a serving platter. Let rest for at about 10 minutes before serving.
*For the gravy sauce:
Skim off and discard most of the fat from the drippings in the pan. Add water and wine (or stock) to deglaze the pan, and heat over medium heat, stirring to loosen and melt the solidified juices.
Strain the juices into a saucepan. Add the celery, onion and carrot. Bring to a boil in high heat. Cover, reduce the heat to low and boil gently for 5 minutes.
Stir in the dissolved potato starch and soy sauce. Bring back to boil while stirring to thicken it. Remove from the heat.
115 g [1/2 cup] Wehani rice 300 ml [1 1/4 cups] chicken or vegetable stock 1/4 tsp sea salt 15 g [1/2 cup] dried mushrooms (such as porcini) - rinsed and broken into pieces 1 cup chopped leek (white part) 1 onion - chopped 1 Tbsp olive oil 60 ml [1/4 cup] water
Combine the rice, stock, salt and dried mushrooms in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat to low. Cook for 1 hour or until the rice is tender. Set the rice aside in the pan, uncovered.
In another saucepan, combine the leek, onion, oil and water and bring to boil. Cover, reduce the heat, and cook in gentle heat for 5 minutes. Remove the lid and continue to cook until all the water is gone.
Add the rice, mix well and let cool to room temperature.
