A Random Recipe: Beef & Lamb Meatballs with Broadbeans & Lemon

I made these with a hangover.  It's the one problem with food planning, I find.  Unpredicted hangovers.  At the start of last week I was all, Monday: Pasta Bianco.  Tuesday: Pasta Bianco (oh yeah, I totally give in to my obsessions).  Wednesday: Out for a friend's birthday.  Thursday:  Beef & Lamb Meatballs with Broadbeans & Lemon.

In fact, it should have read blah...obsessive pasta...blah.  Wednesday:  Out for a friend's birthday.  Plus pre-meal drinks.  Plus after-meal drinks.  Plus staying out till 12.30am on a weeknight (you crazy cat).  Thursday:  YOU WILL WANT TO SLAM YOUR HEAD IN THE DOOR TO TAKE AWAY THE PAIN OF A HANGOVER. WHY IS EVERYONE SHOUTING?

But - and here's the really fun bit - I'd already taken the minced beef out of the freezer, meaning I had to use it that night, or lose it forever.  And as much as the thought of having to stand upright for as long as it took to make these was pure pain, so was the thought of not eating at all that night - remember, feed a hangover - or throwing good money after bad and not using up the beef.

So.  I made these, hungover and no doubt somewhat delirious.  They took a smidge longer than I daresay they would have done if I were in the prime of health, and they had a few more steps than were ideal in my delicate state but, still easy enough to do and, as always with Ottolenghi, his spices were bright and unusual enough for me to sit up and take notice.  And, please somebody pass me a medal, I even double-podded broad beans.  Heroic, undoubtedly, but also very worth it to get the contrast between the two kinds of beans.  It fed my hangover perfectly - the meatballs were substantial enough that it was just the right level of dense protein hit needed for a hangover, and the broad beans and lemon nudged any vitamin buttons I felt I was missing that day.

This is my entry into this month's Random Recipe challenge, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.  It came from my Christmas present from my lovely and generous inlaws, a book I've mentioned my love of already, Ottolenghi's Jerusalem.  I've also noticed it's my second Ottolenghi meatball recipe, but that's the joy of a truly random recipe.  Will it replace those lost brain cells?  No.  Will I make it again?  For sure.  Will I get hungover on a weekday again?  Who am I kidding?  Luckily I've now got some of these in the freezer for next time.

Beef & Lamb Meatballs with Broadbeans and Lemon
Adapted from Ottolenghi, Jerusalem

For the meatballs:
300g minced beef
150g minced lamb
1 onion, finely chopped
120g breadcrumbs
Handful each fresh parsley, coriander, mint, dill, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon baharat spice mix (shop bought is fine; I used a bargain buy I'd got a few months ago called 'Persian Spice Mix' which had mostly the same ingredients in - otherwise, look at those ingredients and DIY)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons capers, chopped
1 egg, beaten

For the sauce:
4.5 tablespoons olive oil
350g broad beans, fresh or frozen
4 thyme sprigs
6 cloves garlic, sliced
8 spring onions, cut into 2cm slices
2.5 tablespoons lemon juice
500ml chicken stock
salt and pepper

For the meatballs, put all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix until thoroughly combined.  Form into 20 balls, each about the size of a ping pong ball.  This is easier if you divide the mix in half, and then into half again, and aim to get five balls out of each section.

In a pan large enough to later take all the meatballs, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil.  In two batches, fry the meatballs so they are browned on the outside, a few minutes for each batch.  Remove from the pan.

While they are cooking, blanch the broad beans in boiling salted water for 2 minutes.  Drain and let them sit under the cold tap for a minute, to cool them down.  Double pod about half of them, by pressing gently on each one until the skin splits and removing the bright green beans from inside.  Discard the empty skins.

In the meatball pan, heat the remaining oil.  Add the thyme, garlic, spring onions and fry gently, stirring all the time, for a few minutes.  Add the unshelled broad beans, 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice, and just enough stock to cover the beans.  Cover the pan with either a lid or with a double thickness of tinfoil, and cook gently for 10 minutes.  Return the meatballs to the pan, stir gently, then add the remaining stock.  Cover the pan again and cook for 25 minutes, when the meatballs should be hot all the way through.

Just before serving, add the remaining lemon juice and shelled broad beans.  Serve immediately.

Serves 4

Violet! You're turning violet, Violet!

Do you believe in fate, kismet, meant-to-be?  Cynical old me would not, normally, indulge in such matters.  We are all just wandering round this planet, no plan, making our own choices and seeing where they take us.  And yet sometimes, just sometimes, something happens that makes me wonder.  Take, for example, my husband.  Before we met, we know for a fact that we were both in the same place at the same time at least twice - in two different countries.  We were both, at the same time, considering buying an apartment in the same block in a city that neither of us were living in.  We finally met in a hostel in Sydney, on a day that neither of us had planned to be there.  So, I don't know.  Maybe it is fate.  Maybe it is coincidence.  Maybe you could take most people in the world and figure out the same kind of connection.

But then, how do you explain this - when I used the brilliant gadget that Dom at Belleau Kitchen had given us to choose our Random Recipe this month, and after I'd dutifully counted my depleted stock of cook books and plugged the parameters in, and it gave me number 24, Nigella Lawson's Kitchen, and from there it gave me page 244, Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins, and it just so happened that I had every ingredient necessary sitting right there in my kitchen - well, tell me you don't believe in fate now.

OK, I know, tenuous link, but still, fate or not, take it from me that you should make these muffins, right now.  Go on, stop reading, go and look, and see if fate has delivered these ingredients for you too.  I know the world doesn't need another blueberry muffin recipe, but the differential here is the cornmeal.  Truth time: I'm not a fan of polenta, but used in baking I think is where it comes into its own.  These were, in the best possible way, unlike any other blueberry muffin I've ever eaten - and, let's face it, there have been many.  The cornmeal adds the most delicious texture, nubbly and homely and not at all dry - and on the top granular and chewy, akin to what happens when you sprinkle sugar on the top of cakes.

I had some warm, and I had some cold (in the interests of research, naturally) and can report they are definitely better warm, even if it means warming them through in a warm oven for a few minutes, or nuking them in the microwave for 20 seconds or so.  Oh, and just be warned too that the blueberries, as they bake, burst and when this mixes with the yellow cornmeal, can produce a couple of slightly alarming greenish patches.

Anyway, whether you want to hear it from me, or whether you want to hear it from fate, make these now.  They are your destiny.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins

From Nigella Lawson, Kitchen

150g plain flour

100g cornmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

0.5 teaspoon baking soda

150g caster sugar

125ml vegetable oil

125ml buttermilk or plain yoghurt

1 egg

100g blueberries

Preheat the oven to 200C,

Mix together the dry ingredients - so flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar.

In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients - stir together the oil, buttermilk or yoghurt, and whisk in the egg.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until just combined (with muffins you really don't want to aim for a completely smooth mixture), and stir through half the blueberries.

Line a 12-hole muffin tin with muffin cases, and divide the mixture equally between them.  Take the remaining blueberries and put them on top of the muffin mixture - aim for about 3 per muffin but this is, obviously, not an exact science.

Bake for 15-20 minutes (they only took 15 in my furnace of an oven) - try a cake tester and it should come out clean.  Leave to cool for 5 minutes in the tin before moving them to a cooling rack.  

Makes 12

Pork Rillons

To be fair, all the signs were there from the start.

Sign 1

I didn't actually know which recipe I was supposed to be making.  Dom, over at Belleau Kitchen challenged us for this month's Random Recipe blog to go to our cuttings & clippings heap neatly filed, well-organised folder.  I gleefully grabbed mine, and said to Andy "right, I'm just going to throw them all on the floor! And then we'll pick!" "Noooooooooooo" came the reply, moving towards me like some slow-mo action hero.  We're trying to keep the house a bit show-homeish at the moment, you see, what with the landlords popping round all the time to do the DIY necessary to sell the house.  Fun times.  Anyway - instead of me giving this place a new carpet of recipes, Andy rifled through the file until I said stop.  And here is the first sign - the piece of paper he dubiously handed me had four different recipes on.  All French, all country-esque, 75% of them the kind that would take me flipping hours and then Andy wouldn't really like anyway.  In all honesty I couldn't remember which one of the recipes had tempted me enough to rip it out of the Jamie magazine, so I went for the one that looked like we would both enjoy.  Looked like.

Sign 2

Pork Rillons, the recipe I went for, are - you've guessed it - yet another pork recipe.  Any suggestion that round here we are one pork meal away from turning porcine ourselves would, frankly, be accurate.  It turns up quite a lot round here.  We are both, in short, heartily sick of pork at the moment.  So picking yet another gratuitous pork recipe?  Sign two.

Sign 3

The recipe suggests serving this dish with 'a lively Sancerre'.  

Sign 4

This recipe takes flipping hours.  You have to start it the night before, salting cubes of pork belly.  Then you have to fry and slow cook the pork belly.  Then you have to leave it to cool.  Then you reheat it.  Flipping.  Hours.  For a flipping (and I quote) 'snack'.  A snack, FYI Jamie Oliver and Ed Wilson, from whom the recipe came, is cheese on toast.  An apple.  Yoghurt eaten straight from the pot.  It is not something you have to start the night before.  And yes, I am saying 'flipping' a lot but my Mum reads this blog.  Sometimes.

Sign 5

I had literally no idea just how much 250g of lard looks like, until I measured it out.  Trying to kid myself, I pretended that the fluffy white solids in the bowl were ice cream.  And then I realised I wouldn't even allow myself that much ice cream.  That was the point, sign five, at which I knew we were really in trouble.

Sign 6

Frying cubes of pork belly, skin side down, in some of the aforementioned lard, creates a lot of smoke.  Enough to set off the fire alarm and make your newly-cleaned carpets smell of acrid pig fat.  Oh, and the skin STILL wasn't crisp enough, like some kind of flipping heat-resistant kevlar jacket for the pork.   Every window and door in the place wide open, autumn upon us so not as warm as it has been.  Sign six, right there.

Sign 7

Serving up, after all that time and effort and just flipping everything, what essentially comes down to cubes of flabby pork belly that taste of lard.  Not the promised chic bistro-snack.  I guess that was the biggest sign.  That and the uneaten pork pushed to the side of the plate.  The nicest part of the meal were the green salad and the bread and listen, I am not the sort of person who says that lightly.

Sign 8

We don't eat much pudding day-to-day, but I'd made an apple crumble, on a hunch.  Just in case.  We ate it all. 

So yeah, in the future, listen to the signs.  My sign to you is - DON'T MAKE THE LARD CUBES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.  Or if you do, make sure that the green salad and bread are really good, you have apple crumble for afters, and that glass of lively sancerre translates into a whole bottle.  You will need it.

Pork Rillons
From Jamie Oliver magazine

1kg pork belly, bones removed if there are any
50g salt
250g lard
250ml dry white wine (I suggest you use your lively Sancerre and neck the rest from the bottle in a fit of disappointment)
3 bay leaves
1 large sprig thyme
10 peppercorns
4 garlic cloves, halved
125ml water
Green salad and bread to serve (this is important)

The day before you want to eat your snack, plan well ahead.  Cut the pork belly into 5cm cubes, sprinkle with the salt, cover and put in the fridge.

The morning before you want your snack, rinse the salt off the pork and pat dry with kitchen towels.  Over a high heat, fry the cubes of pork belly in a small amount of lard.  Curse the recipe and open the windows.

Heat your oven to 140C.  In one layer in an oven proof dish, put the cubes of pork, the wine, the garlic, thyme, bay, peppercorns, the rest of the lard and the water.

Cook for 1.5 hours until the pork is tender and tastes of lard.

Pour away most of the lardy juice and leave to cool in a small amount of it.

When you are ready to eat your snack, heat your oven to 200C.  Heat the pork for 10 minutes until sizzling.

Leave most of the pork, eat the salad, the bread, and drink the wine.  Realise as you smell the lard lingering in your hair that some recipes remain in your folder, uncooked, for a reason.

Serves - god knows.  Depends on how many lard cubes you will eat, per person.   This made about 16 cubes, so take it from there.

Enchiladas Suizas with Green Rice

One of my good friends here in Wellington is a lovely lady from Texas, Elaine.  Once when all of us were gathered at my house, over a cocktail or seven and copious amounts of cake, we got to reminiscing about school food and canteen food.  Us Brits fondly remembered Fish & Chip Friday, whereas Elaine got instant exotic status by telling us about Tex Mex Friday at her school.  This seemed so other-worldly to us raised in the cold climes of North-West Europe.  Tex-Mex is generally a cuisine I'm not altogether familiar with, apart from suffering through a few badly-cooked fajitas - in my limited experience it seems an easy food for restaurants to do badly, although I'm sure travelling to Texas would cure me of that perception.

So I was delighted, if not a tad apprehensive, when I got a Tex Mex recipe for this month's Random Recipe Challenge, hosted by Dom over at Belleau Kitchen.  The theme for February is 'the choice is yours'.  My choice was already somewhat limited; ahead of our impending move, I've already made a start on packing up all but my most-used cookbooks.  I did have a newcomer to the fold though - a Christmas present from Andy, as yet unused, and so an obvious contender for this challenge.  My Year In Meals by Rachael Ray takes the successful format used by, amongst others, Nigel Slater, and tracks a year's worth of food eaten.  I know that Rachael Ray isn't the most popular figure in the food world, but I stand unashamed of my admiration for her - anyone who can write recipes for balanced 30 minute meals and encourage more people to head into the kitchen is A Good Thing in my book, which this sort of is.  I've found her food tasty and I've never had a duff recipe, so was delighted to get this present.

The recipe I picked, eyes-closed-no-peeking, was Enchiladas Suizas with Green Rice.  I assume the name comes from the Swiss Cheese used, though would be happy to be corrected on this one.  I had some difficulty tracking down a couple of ingredients (I guess Tex Mex has reached NZ to about the same point as the UK) - fresh large poblano chillis were a no-go, so I subbed with a couple of regular capsicums.  I thought tomatillos would also be impossible, but was pleasantly surprised to find a tinned version at Moore Wilson's.  I'm delighted I did, as I could really taste them in the finished dish.  Texture-wise similar to a tomato, but with a much tangier taste, they resulted in a sauce that tasted almost a Tex Mex sweet and sour.

Both of us absolutely loved this dish.  Filling, super-tasty, comfort food with a slight kick: the richness of the Enchiladas was counter-balanced by the fresh, punchy flavours of the green rice - which I would do again in a heartbeat, but possibly stick some garlic in there too, just because, and leave the butter out, as I couldn't see that it added anything to the finished dish.  The green rice would go fantastically well with Asian dishes, too.  Also, I know nothing about feeding children, but it occurred to me that the bright, luminous green colour might appeal to them.

Final point - don't do what I did and use Low-Fat Sour Cream.  It curdled, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the low fat-ness.  I generally don't get on board with Low-Fat ingredients - I'd rather just eat less of the real deal - but as I'm trying to follow a Healthy Eating Plan *sob* right now, I was a bit shocked that one portion of this dish would take out a massive chunk of my entire day's calories, so tried to bring that down anywhere I could.  Not a smart move, as it turns out.

Thanks for hosting another great Random Recipe Challenge, Dom, and congratulations on making it to number 25!

Enchiladas Suizas with Green Rice
From Rachael Ray, My Year In Meals

Enchiladas
2 capsicums/peppers
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 green chilli, seeded and chopped
1 can tomatillos
Handful of coriander
Juice of 1 lime
2 teaspoons honey
Salt and pepper
8 (6 inch) flour tortillas
1 cup creme fraiche, Mexican crema, or sour cream
1 cup grated Emmental
1 cup grated Cheddar
Red onion, sliced, and coriander, for garnish

Put the capsicums under a hot grill, turning them every few minutes, until blackened - this will take about 10 minutes.  When charred all over, put them in a bowl and cover tightly with cling film.  Leave to one side.

Switch the oven to 190c/375f.

Place the chicken in a pan and add enough water to just come up to the top of the meat.  Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer and cook for about 12 minutes, until they're cooked through.

While the chicken is poaching, heat the oil in a frying pan, add the olive oil and fry the onion, garlic and chilli over a medium-high heat until soft.

Put this mixture in a food processor along with the tomatillos, coriander, and lime juice.  Peel and seed the capsicums and roughly chop them.  Add these to the processor.  Blitz until pretty much smooth.  Pour this sauce back into the frying pan, stir in the honey, salt and pepper, and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Shred the cooked, poached chicken with 2 forks.  Warm the tortillas (RR suggests in a dry skillet; I followed the manufacturers instructions and zapped them in the microwave for 30 seconds).

Place a little sauce in the bottom of a baking dish.  Fill the tortillas with chicken, roll them up, and arrange them side by side in the baking dish - they should fit snugly.  Top with the remaining sauce, them the sour cream and the two cheeses.  Bake for about 25 minutes, until browned and bubbling.

Garnish with red onion and coriander.  Serve with Green Rice.

Green Rice
1.75 cups chicken stock*
1 bunch spinach leaves
Handful coriander leaves
1 green chilli, seeded and chopped
4 spring onions, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup long grain rice

In a food processor, blitz 0.25 cup of the stock, the spinach, coriander, chilli and spring onions until it is a thick paste and everything is very finely chopped.

In a pan, bring the remaining stock and the butter to the boil.  Stir in the rice, reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about 15 minutes, until tender.  Stir in the spinach mixture, cook for a further 2 minutes, turn off the heat and leave for about 5 minutes.

*I used the reserved water from poaching the chicken with a stock cube dissolved in it - can't get the liquid stock concentrate here and I didn't want to defrost some chicken stock and end up wasting the poaching water

Serves 4

Random Recipe Challenge

Okay, so here we go with my first ever blogging challenge.  I feel like the new girl in school!  As I'm sure I've mentioned somewhere, I am an obsessive consumer of anything whatsoever to do with food, from eating it (ahem), to watching the Food Network at every given opportunity (Andy works a LOT of night shifts), to my overflowing files filled with recipes ripped out from wherever I can find them (truth time: I found an old, circa 1995, copy of Cuisine Magazine at the bus stop the other day and felt no shame whatsoever in taking a recipe from that), to my earthquake-risk tower of cookbooks.  This also includes reading other food blogs.  I love them.  I drool over them.  And, like the new girl in school, I get major food and lifestyle crushes on them.

One such lovely blog is Belleau Kitchen in which Dom talks about his life and his food in beautiful Lincolnshire.  A year ago, he had the wonderful idea to host a Random Recipe Challenge, with, as I talked about in my last post, the fantastic idea of using one of those many, many, cookbooks to cook a random recipe.  I knew instantly I wanted in; to my shame, out of my hundreds of cookbooks, a figure-too-embarassing-to-say have never been used.  On our trip to Dunedin last year, University capital of NZ, we stumbled on a Dickens-esque dusty second hand bookshop days before it was closing down - everything was being sold off for mere cents, and I bought out pretty much its entire range of cookbooks in two fell swoops (couldn't carry everything at once; had to come back the next day).  I tell you this not as the exception for me, but the rule. 

So with my trusty assistant Andy fully prepped and primed as to his duties, I turned my back, closed my eyes, waited for half a minute or so, and yelled stop.  And boy, did I pick a goodie.  Can I take any pride in that random selection?  Please say yes, I'll take it where I can get it these days.  bills sydney food is one of those books that shamefully glowers at me every time I cook an easy old favourite.  Very appropriately, it was bought for me as a Christmas present in 2009 by Andy, after we'd eaten at bills in Sydney when we stayed there with my brother and his wife.  Even more appropriately, Andy and I first met in Sydney, both of us on a solo round-the-world trip, both of us going in opposite directions, but we met, and that was that.  Done deal.  We were the backpacking holiday romance that stuck.  Although, I will just say this one time about the book and the restaurant - the punctuation KILLS me.  But, it is what it is, and what it is is bills.  The flavours look lovely and fresh, the very best of antipodean life, and even on a rainy day elsewhere, I imagine they could transport you to a sunny, cosmopolitan city far, far away where life is good, beer is cold, and people are happy.

The recipe picked at random was absolutely right up my culinary street.  Chicken Noodle Soup with Lemon.  Bill Granger describes it as Vietnamese pho meets Jewish chicken soup.  Right there, right in the title and the description, are all my favourite things in food.  What could be more wonderful, soothing and jolting at the same time, as a chicken soup with Asian flavours?  And yet, and yet.  I was mildly disappointed in this soup, and felt that the depth of flavour that is usually there with a lovingly-made chicken stock, was missing.  The recipe had me make a chicken stock to start, but the only aromatics were 4 slices of ginger, 2 spring onions, and black peppercorns.  The spring onions weren't oomphy enough - in the future I would use regular brown onions, and probably some garlic as well, which would give more flavour without clashing with the other tones in the dish.  Before serving, you put lemon juice (technically 3 teaspoons, but who will measure that out? I used half a lemon), the same of fish sauce, and a sliced red chilli in a bowl, before adding the stock, shredded chicken, and fresh lasagne, cut up in place of noodles.  It was these flavours that dominated and, though they definitely improved the soup and made it fresher, they were all top-notes and no depth.  All mouth and no trousers.

You know when I would make this soup again, actually? When I have a cold.  When your taste buds are dulled and deadened, so those top notes would sing their way through the murk, and we all know the famously healing properties of chicken soup.  Then, it would be perfect, and I predict that I'll be all over this soup in June and July (still strange to me that those months are winter, I'm such a Brit), but in the summer, not so much.  The other change I would make is to replace the fresh lasagne with regular noodles; I didn't feel it added anything to the dish other than expense.

Still, not a bad way at all for me to dip my new girl toes into the water, and I know Andy was very relieved that we didn't get anything involving offal or tomatoes.  I'm looking forward to next month already.

Chicken Noodle Soup with Lemon
From bills sydney food

1 1.5kg chicken
4 slices fresh ginger
2 spring onions, cut into 10cm lengths
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
9 ears baby corn, sliced in half lengthways
1.5 cups bok choi
3 sheets fresh lasagne, torn into 5cm squares
3 teaspoons lemon juice
3 teaspoons fish sauce
1 red chilli, sliced
12 mint leaves
.75 cup of coriander leaves
thin slices of lemon

Make the chicken stock by putting the chicken, ginger, spring onions and peppercorns in a large pan with lots of water to cover - the book suggests 4 litres, my pan couldn't take that much so I used 3 litres instead.  Bring to a boil, skim off the scum that gathers on the top, and reduce to a simmer for 3 hours.

When the stock is ready, remove the chicken and shred it, and strain the stock, discarding the ginger, spring onions, and peppercorns.

Cook the squares of lasagne in salted water until cooked, which with fresh pasta takes, what, 2 minutes? Drain well, and put in a large serving bowl along with the lemon juice, fish sauce, and chillies.  

Put the chicken stock in a pan over a high heat, add the shredded chicken, corn and bok choi, and cook for another minute or so, until the vegetables are only just tender.  Add this to the serving bowl, and serve, with a scattering of mint, coriander, and fresh lemon slices on the top (the eagle-eyed amongst you might notice the lack of coriander; I try to grow it but realised minutes before I made this recipe that it had succumbed to the lurgy so our soup was coriander-less).

 So that's my first ever entry in Random Recipe Challenge - thanks for the smashing idea Dom, I and my trusty tester both enjoyed it and will be back for more next month.  Who knows where it will take us?