Meatballs Madness (I) Meatballs with Ricotta and Sun-dried Tomatoes

Did you ever think about who was the first person who thought of saying meatball madness? Who ever saw an indefinite amount of meatballs and screamed: This is madness! I keep imagining some 17th century dude, in his tight pants, being absolutely bedazzled by the sight of meatballs. So, with that image in mind, I decided I need to have  reason to say meatball madness, thereforeI had to cook some tasty  beef meatballs. 

I used: 

• 500 grams of minced beef, 
• 1 medium onion, finely diced, 
• 3 cloves of garlic, 
• 150 grams of ricotta cheese,  
• 100 grams of sun dried tomatoes and about 3 tbs of the oil they were kept in, 
• parsley,  
• thyme, 
• 2 eggs, 
• flour, 
• salt, 
• pepper, 
• some oil for cooking. 

Just mix all the ingredients together really well, except the flour. 

Make sure the onion, tomatoes, garlic and herbs are all finely chopped,  so you can mix then evenly.  Add the flour to thicken the composition, I used around 150 grams, both for putting it in the meat and for lightly flouring the meatballs. Heat up some olive oil on medium high heat, and fry you golf ball size meatballs until golden brown on all sides,  shouldn't take long. 

As a side dish, I just boiled some delicious,  fresh green beans and seasoned them as mentioned here. 

This meatball recipe, with  definite Italian influences is light, fresh and a delicious way to bring some ordinary and common meatballs to the next level. The ricotta make them moist and very light. There is definitely gonna be a next time cooking these.

Enjoy,

Breakfast Revolution: French Toast with Apples and Cinnamon

Do you find toast too boring for your mornings? Don’t worry, this is French. J I am not sure the recipe is even French, or that French people eat it, but it is a simple breakfast for which you don’t have to go down to the grocery store to buy ingredients. For a twist for your toast (?!?) I added some apples, cooked just a bit with some cinnamon.

For 6 slices a bread prepare a batter with:

2 beaten eggs

1 pinch a salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp 5 spice

125 ml milk

*French toast recipe adapted from foodwishes.blogspot.com

Some butter for frying and some honey/ maple syrup for serving.

Mix all the ingredients and whisk them good, then toss the bread slices in the batter until they absorb all the liquid. In a pan with some butter, fry the bread slices until they turn golden-brown. Then, transfer the slices on a tray and let then cook some more in the oven (for 10-15 minutes) until the outside gets crispy.

When the toast is in the oven you can get on with the apples. In a pan, heat up some vegetable oil with a dust of cinnamon, 5 spices, nutmeg and vanilla sugar. When the oil is heated it will already be infused with those lovely spices. You just need to add the apple, sliced as you prefer it. Make sure to toss it around to get covered in all the spices. Also, the vanilla sugar will caramelize it a little. Cook them as long as you like, I didn’t want to make them all mushy and pureed, so I just let the slices get a bit tender and absorb the flavors (around 3-5 minutes).

Add the apples to the toast and drizzle some honey or maple syrup on top of everything. Great start to make your day sweeter.

Enjoy,

Mrs. G.

Goat-Cheese Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms

Because we absolutely loved our first time eating blossoms, we had to try it again as soon as we could.

I love this time of the year, the vegetables are getting better and better, their prices are dropping, and you can find really good produce in the farmer markets. One of the most abundant vegetables out there is the humble zucchini, that you can get for ridiculous low prices right now. 

Unfortunately, using this vegetable on an everyday scale isn’t really an option, so to spice things up, we also like to cook its blossoms. We showed earlier a ricotta cheese recipe, and we decided to make a goat cheese version, a recipe with a little bit more personality.

So, for 7 flowers, we used:

200 g of goat cheese (use a soft one, that you can work into a paste), 
2 green onions, 
2 tbs of chopped fennel leaves, 
1tsp nutmeg, 
1 chilli
flour and sparkling water for the batter

First and foremost, prepare the blossoms by (gently) removing each one’s pestle, which tastes terrible. No, really, they should have an emoticon for that, it is one of the most bitter things we’ve ever tasted. Oh, and check for ants, they tend to roam inside the flowers as well (or don’t, think of them as extra crunch J). 

Mix, the cheese, finely sliced onions, the chilli, fennel and nutmeg and fill the flowers, making sure the composition is well sealed inside. 

For the batter, you need to create a mix that has a slightly thicker density that a pancake one. Dip the filled blossoms in the batter, making sure they are well covered, then fry them in hot vegetable oil until they get a light brown color. 

For an extra visual effect, make sure you don’t cover the flowers with too much batter, so, when fried, the blossom will retain some of its original color (otherwise all you’ll see will be fried batter). 

Feel free to sprinkle some lemon juice on the flowers or any type of tangy vinaigrette that can bring some balance.

Enjoy!

Fried Ricotta-Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms

My parents went to my granny's house this weekend and brought us some zuchini blossoms. To me honest it is the first time we tried preparing these, although we wanted to do it for a long time.

We chose a fresh recipe, one that will also be simple, just for us to understand the taste and the possibilities of these blossoms.

We had six blossoms with the tiny zucchinis attached. First, although we were quite scared of how delicate they seemed, we took out the pestles from each flower,  and washed them.

The filling:

200-250 g Ricotta cheese
1/2 bunch of mint
30 g Parmesan
chopped dry chipotle to taste
salt and pepper
Just mix all the ingredients in a bowl.

Because we used Ricotta the filling turned out pretty soft, so we found that the best way to fill the blossoms was with some baking sheet rolled into a piping bag with the end cut off. Of course, you could use a piping bag or even a teaspoon if you are the handy kind.

In order to fry them we used a simple batter made of 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of sparkling water. You can always add more water  or flour if necessary. The point is that the batter should be thick enough to stick to your finger when you dip it in, but thin enough to drip slowly.

After dipping them in the batter, fry them in vegetable oil until they turn golden and crispy, about 3 minutes on each side. We served them with lemon juice on top, this dish could go with a sour note, so you could prepare a vinaigrette or a salsa.

This was a really nice suprise, we must say. The filling was very fresh and light and the blossoms are definitely a seasonal ingredient that we will look for from now on.

Oh...and the tiny zucchinis attached to them were exceptional. Now, that is something worth mentioning.

Enjoy,
Mrs. G.