This is one of MY favourite dinners. It is so simple and the ingredients are minimal but it is DELICIOUS. I often serve it when we have friends and their children over for dinner and accompany it with an argula, pear and and parmesan salad. The adults are always amazed by how flavoursome such few ingredients are.
2 slices of bread
¼ cup of milk
500g pork mince
The finely grated zest of a lemon
Small onion, very finely sliced or diced.
Garlic clove, crushed.
Jar of passata
Salt, pepper, sugar
Small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
Place the bread in a shallow dish, pour over the milk and leave it until the bread has soaked up all the milk. Then add the mince and lemon zest to the bread. Use your hands to combine it all.
Once combined, make teaspoon sized meatballs.
Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan and brown the meatballs. Removed from pan.
In the same pan, heat some more oil (add a knob of butter to the pan if you wish. I like to) over low-med heat. Add the onions and garlic and sauté until soft and translucent. The add the jar of passata and allow to bubble up. Season to taste. Stir the parsley through then return the meatballs to the pan. Cook for about 10 – 15 mins, until the meatballs are cooked through and the sauce has taken that wonderfully thick consistency that coats a spoon.
Serve with the pasta of your choice. I’m rather partial to linguine.
The recipe for this is in storage, but the general principle is to mould the meatball of your choice around a paddlepop/lolly stick to form a maraca. It’s such a clever idea. Makes them very easy for the kids to pick up and eat. I will be making a lamb version this Friday for a road trip, so will add some mint to the recipe below.
500g of mince
Small onion, finely diced or grated
Mushrooms, finely diced
1 zucchini, grated
1 carrot, grated
A small tin of creamed corn
1 egg
Breadcrumbs
Combine all of the ingredients except for the breadcrumbs in a bowl. Add breadcrumbs until the texture of the mixture takes a form that will hold to the stick.
Mould to whatever size takes your fancy, then pan fry them.Or grill. Or roast. You choose.
500g of mince of your choice (I alternate between pork and chicken mince).
Noodles of your choice
Soy sauce
Hoisin sauce
Lettuce leaves, Cos, baby gem, iceberg
To make life easy, I dice the vegetables, onion, garlic and ginger and put them into a bowl together, keeping the snow peas aside.
Heat some oil in a heavy bottomed frying pan and then add the vegetable mix. Stir over medium heat until the vegetables have softened.
Remove veg from pan. Add another splash of oil and make sure the pan is hot.
Add the mince to the pan and push it down so the whole pan is covered. When it starts to brown, begin to break it up and stir until cooked through. Add the vegetables to the pan and stir. When all combined add some soy sauce and hoisin sauce. A couple of tablespoons of each works for us, but do it to your taste.
Add the noodles and stir through so all combined.
Serve a portion of mince/veg/noodle mix in a small bowl and give the kids a plate with some lettuce leaves on it. Mine love to spoon their own mix onto the lettuce, fold it up into a parcel and take big bites where they invariably drop the bulk of the parcel's contents back onto the plate or, more often than not, the floor.
Mark and I will then add the following to ours for a slightly more grown up version.
NB: I've only just become aware of this site (thank you Camille) but it's so cheap. Amazon prices without the postage. They ship to Australia for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
I love the story that comes with this recipe. My friend Manda made me a chicken and apricot tagine when we both lived in London. I tried to recreate it a week later for some friends and they loved it. So much so that they asked for the recipe, which I promptly made up. Fuelled by the adulation I made it again for some other friends the following week. They loved it and asked for the recipe. This happened one more time. After that I stopped making it, I’d gone in too hard too early.
A few years later my girlfriend Nicole, (who is an extra ordinary cook with a Cordon Bleu feather in her hat) mentioned that her sister was making my ‘Chicken Tagine Thingey’. I was like, my what? She reminded me of the dish and forwarded me the email I had originally sent her entitled ‘Chicken tagine thingey’.
A few years later still, with this dish firmly back in my repertoire and now living in Sydney, I was making it for dinner and to introduce chicken to a then baby Zach. My girlfriend Fiona (another inspiring cook) came over. She asked what was cooking and upon being told, she informed me that all of her female family (mum, sister, aunts) make my ‘chicken tagine thingey’.
The sad thing is, I’ve been taking credit for it for so long, when actually I should have been calling it ‘Manda’s chicken tagine thingey’. Sorry Manda.
Anyways, it was made most recently for an early dinner date with the truly gorgeous Bellamy who apparently sang all the way home. She’s such a joyous child she would have done it anyway, but it’s made me post it.
You will need:
Olive oil
1 inch ginger, finely grated
1 garlic clove, crushed
750g chicken thighs, diced into chunks.
1 brown onion, finely sliced
1 teaspoon cumin seeds,ground
1 teaspoon coriander seeds,ground
¼ teaspoon cardamom seeds, ground ground
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 medium sized sweet potatoes (or 1 big one) peeled and cut into 2cm cubes – you can use pumpkin, which is wonderful for flavour, but can’t take the cooking time as well.
1 litre chicken stock (or water if you prefer)
Juice of a lemon
Fish sauce
½ cup of apricots
Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius.
Heat olive oil in casserole dish and brown the chicken in batches. Remove with slotted spoon and set aside. Then add some more oil and a knob of butter to the pan. When the butter starts to bubble add the onions and stir to coat. When the onions start to soften, add the ground spices and stir around for a minute or so until your kitchen is lovely and fragrant. Then add the sweet potatoes and stir around until they are coated with the spice laden onions. Pour stock over the sweet potatoes, add the lemon juice and a couple of splashes of fish sauce. Bring to the boil. Return chicken to the pan along with the apricots and stir to combine. Bring to the boil again.
Then place the lid on your casserole dish and stick in the oven for an hour or so, until the vegetables are soft, but not mushy and the chicken flakes apart.
This purees really well, should you have a puree eating member of the family. Also, if you find there’s too much liquid, take some out along with a bit of the sweet potato. Puree the extracted bits and return to the pan to thicken the sauce.
When you serve this to adults, stir through some almonds (whole or cut) and sprinkle generously with fresh coriander.
