Quick Meatball Casserole

I’m back in London since beginning of this week, and desperately need a way to cook around all my limitations: no oven, very few herbs and spices, and one person only to feed (although the latter might more be a problem of lacking inspiration than of anything else). Ideal preconditions to make a one-dish meal.

 

Quick Meatball Casserole

500 g turkey (or any other) mince
small bunch of parsley
2(-4) onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
450 g carrots, quartered and cut into chunks
450 g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 tbsp. paprika
500 g can passata/ chopped tomatoes

Make sure you have at least chopped half of the vegetables, if not all, before you begin. Don’t chop the carrots too finely; they will be cooked as long as the potatoes even though they have a shorter cooking time, and still need to be crisp.

Mix the turkey mince with half the chopped parsley and some salt and pepper and form small meat balls. Heat some oil in a casserole and fry until the meatballs are done. Or just buy ready-made meatballs from your local supermarket as I have, in order to avoid having Spaghetti Bolognese yet again (see this entry).

Add the chopped onions, carrots, and the garlic and fry shortly before you add the potatoes and 300 ml (or two large glasses) of water (– the original recipe says nothing about frying in this step, but I just enjoy the taste of fried onions, and I had already mixed them with the carrots and the garlic when this step occurred to me). Bring to a boil, cover (or not, but make sure the potatoes are immersed) and simmer for 15 min.

Stir in the paprika, passata/ chopped tomatoes and half the remaining parsley. Bring to a boil, cover (or not; I had no choice, I had no lid for my casserole but it went just fine; just don’t forget the potatoes) and cook for a further 10-15 min or until the potatoes are tender. Season to taste and sprinkle with the remaining parsley.

 
Notes:

It will be crucial for this recipe that you end up having nicely boiled potatoes without having flabby overcooked carrots. As I said above, try not to chop too fine chunks of carrots but make an effort with the potatoes (relatively, that is – mine were approximately 2×2×2 cm). I could only find cans of chopped tomatoes instead of passata, and it went very well – you could probably also add other vegetables, or passata plus fresh tomatoes, as long as you add enough liquid.

I’m not yet really sure whether I should award this recipe three or four stars – I guess the problem is mainly that it tastes too much like typical kids’ food. Don’t shy away from this dish because of this comment, the food is tasty, and anyway, it’s ideal for kids…

And check your cupboard for any ingredients you believe you don’t have before cooking, not after…

Serves 4; adapted from the BBC Good Food Series’ 101 One-pot Dishes.

The Oxford Companion to Food and Pollo a la Española

A new year requires a new blog, and a new blog requires a new cookbook, at least if it is concerned with cookbooks and the blogger’s addictions to them. Of course I wouldn’t let such an excellent excuse to buy a new cookbook slip away. A week before Christmas I had discovered Alan Davidson’s The Oxford Companion to Food lying in my local bookstore – discounted from € 65 to € 25… With Christmas in my mind I resolved not to buy it then, but to come back after my Christmas holiday and check if this book was meant for me. And surprise, surprise, what did I see? Anyway, you might gather from the book’s title that it’s not really a cookbook, which gives me yet another excuse. Any suggestions?

We had enough Escalivada over today (we actually still have enough for tomorrow, too..) so I decided to look for a main dish that would complement these vegetables well. Pollo a la Española looked interesting and, even better, used all my leftovers: a single green bell pepper, a lonely tomato, some bacon. All I needed to buy was another red bell pepper and four chicken filets, and to raid my storage for the rest.

 

Pollo a la Española

4 chicken portions
paprika
150 g bacon (alternatively: cubed Serrano)
1 large or 2 small onions
2 garlic cloves
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
450 g tomatoes or 400 g canned tomatoes

Rub the chicken with salt and paprika, and fry gently until done. Fry the bacon in another pan, and add the chopped onions and garlic when the bacon starts to give off fat. Clean the bell peppers and chop them roughly. Add them to the onions, or really follow the recipe, unlike me, and add them to the chicken; either seems to work well. Add the tomatoes and the chicken, season, and let simmer on low heat for some 15 minutes.

Serve with rice.

 
Notes:

In this recipe the chicken seems to be prone to dry out – be careful not to let that happen by frying the chicken as little as possible.

Serves 4; adapted from Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking.