Ooozy Cheesy Really Easy, honest (Meat)

Name: Celandine

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Product:	Meat
Date:	17/08/01 (1031 review reads)
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Advantages: hello, I never know what to put here, either

Disadvantages: Or here, really.

Meatballs. Hmm, well, yes. They aren't really exciting, you know. They're that sort of sensible foodstuff that brings to mind the 1970's OXO family, all sitting down to a nice sensible, dull meal, with cabbage, carrots and gravy. They just aren't exotic, I suppose. I'll defy anyone to find anything remotely exotic about a meatball.

Only they're nice, you see, and you can add different things to them, and you can make them all in different sizes, from teeeny-tiny little ones oven cooked in lots of tomato sauce, to pan-fried ones with lots of caramelized onions on top of them. They're easy, too, and ever so quick, and if you've a child, you can make them child-sized, and easily munched with fingers. You can serve them with almost anything, from mash, to noodles, to stuffing them in pitta breads with salad. You can flavour them with anything, too, from a classic beef mince, onion, mushroom and herb seasoning, to spicy cumin and coriander ones.

Meatballs can be fun. Well, maybe not a laugh-a-minute, but it's easier to have fun with a full stomach, unless we're talking about particularly acrobatic fun, I suppose. So there we go. I make them lots, partly because they're cheap, partly because they're easy, partly because they taste really nice, and you can experiment with what you put in them, and mostly because I do try to cook food from scratch, as often as I can. I like to know what's gone in to things, you see, and if I'm making it, then I'm pretty sure that it isn't too nasty (ever wondered what goes into frozen beefburgers? I had a friend who worked for Walls, and she told me. Let's just say it made her a vegetarian for life).

Anyway, so to the recipes. These are all drop-dead easy ones, since I like easy food. They aren't low fat, particularly (sorry), because they contain a pretty large proportion of cheese, but they're reasonably economical to make, and if you
want to bulk them out, so they last longer, just add a handful or two of breadcrumbs, or cooked rice, to the recipes, and they'll stretch a bit further. The quantities I've given make about 8 medium to large size meatballs, or about 12 teensy ones (teensy equating to about half the size of a golf ball). That's two meals for us, and I tend to serve them with salad and baked potatoes (or something) the first day, then the next I re-heat them in a tomato sauce, in the oven, with a bit more cheese on top, and serve with rice or noodles.

So, to the recipes. The first is for:

Pork and Smoked Applewood Burgers

Ingredients:
450g/1 pound minced pork
100g/4oz grated smoked applewood (you can use cheddar, or lancashire, or any sort of cheese, really, but I love the flavour of smoked applewood in this one)
1 egg
Seasonings (again, whatever you like, really, but I vary between going for a mixture of dry mustard, paprika, parsley and worcester sauce, or a more herby mixture of thyme, basil, and parsley. If you like your food extra spicy, then try adding a dash of cayenne pepper, or tabasco. Mushroom ketchup works well, too, but I would advise against using all of the above at the same time)

Method

Break up the mince a bit with a fork, then add about the seasoning combination of your choice. Mine, at the moment is a teaspoon of dry mustard powder, a pinch of cayenne pepper (I'd add more, but Ellie isn't that keen, yet), a good teaspoon of paprika, and some salt and pepper.

Now, grate the cheese into the mixture, and mix it all together with the egg.

Form into meatballs using your hands, and cook in the oven at about 180 degrees for about half an hour to 40 mins, until they are done. If you like, then you can fry them gently, in a little oil, but I find they stay together easier if I oven cook them.

The only drawback to oven cooking is they can become dry, but if you cook t
hem in tomato sauce, then the cheeze oozes out the meatballs into the sauce, creating little cheesey gooey mouthfulls as you eat them. If you oven cook them like this, too, then you can add breadcrumbs to the top of the cheesey, meatbally, tomatoey mixture, which bulk out the dish, and also make it beautifully crunchy. Put more cheese on the top of the breadcrumbs. Yes, that too - parmesan, especially.

So there's a pork recipe. If you want a real variation, then try combining the mince with chopped apple, and onion. It makes a lovely meatball, too.

Now to beef mince:

Beef and Stilton Meatballs (with a bit of mushroom in the middle).

If you like Stilton, then you may well like this meatball, but if you don't then omit it, and maybe put in onion, or chopped gherkins, or a few capers instead, just to flavour the mince. I find stilton quite a strong flavour, so I go easy on the other seasoning, but if you want a spicy meatball, then leave out the chilli, and try mixing in mashed kidney beans and chilli powder. But here's the stilton recipe, since I love the combined flavours, and the little pockets of melting stilton that escape as you bite into the meatball, sort of complementing the little bits of mushroom, and ohhh, just being rather nice, really.

Ingredients:
1 pound/450g beef mince
1 small onion
40z crumbled stilton cheese
about five largish button mushrooms
Parsley, and salt and pepper

Method
Finely chop the mushrooms and onion, and mix with the mince and stilton. Add beaten egg to the mixture, and season. Mix together and shape as per pork burger recipe.

Cook in oven, as per pork burger recipe, only this one doesn't work quite so well with a tomato sauce. I'd cook it dry, in the oven, and then serve with a pasta salad, a green salad, and some nice cheese and onion bread, or foccacia.

If you want to be really posh, then you could always choose smalle
r mushrooms, and cook them whole, inside the meatball, pressing the rest of the mixture around them as you form the balls.

So there you go. There are loads, and loads of variations to these recipes. I've made lamb meatballs, seasoning with mint and parsley, and served with new potatoes, peas, and mint jelly. I've made little chicken meatballs and poached them in soup, too. There's only one drawback, here. I've thought, and thought, and tried to come up with a veggie alternative that I could include, but I haven't struck lucky yet. I suppose it's in the title really : a meatball sort of has to have meat in it. I know there's always quorn mince, but I'm not really that keen on the 'meat substitute' products. No, I think there are nice enough vegetarian dishes around not to have to worry about mock-meatball alternatives. Homity pies, now, they're gorgeous, but they don't really belong to an op on meatballs, alas.

But, if you've a packet of mince in the fridge, and you're bored with spaghetti bolognese, then meatballs, well, they just might be an idea. But they're nicer with cheese, honest, it's a texture thing. Melting cheese, slightly spicy sauce, little teensy tiny mouthfulls of meatball...they're quite jolly, really.

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