Moroccan meatballs with egg

I was on a roll with making food from my 400 and Under collection of recipes. I always look out for recipes that provide less than 400 calories per serving because that means we have some leeway with having a glass of wine, say, while still keeping our calories down and, therefore, still (theoretically at least) sticking to a diet. The thought of Moroccan spiced meatballs with egg in a delicious tomatoey sauce seemed too good to be true – a rich and delicious supper that would only add up to (according to Good Food Magazine, where I found the recipe) a mere 377 calories per serving.

It’s diet food! And it would be delicious. Who wants to live on cottage cheese and celery when you can have a gorgeous steaming bowl of meatballs? Meatballs in a tomato and chickpea spiced sauce with a lovely egg cooked in there…….I had everything I needed so I started by chopping a small sweet white onion and a small red onion. That’s because the recipe said one onion… and these were more midget sized onions.

They went into the frying pan to soften while I started on the meatballs themselves. I did have one problem – I had no ground cinnamon and I needed that for a real Moroccan hit. I love the smell of cinnamon (and having made this recipe once, the next time I will add more cinnamon) I did have, however, cinnamon sticks and a large pestle and mortar…

Quite therapeutic to bash and grind the cinnamon into a soft and fragrant powder. But possibly easier to buy it ground…..? I did manage to get some ground cinnamon but there were lots of bits of the stick left. Anyway, I did, in the end, after lots of pounding, finish up with half a teaspoon or thereabouts which I added to 250g of lamb mince.

(Having made the dish I have to say that I would, when I do it again, add more than half a teaspoon of cinnamon because I so love that rich and exotic taste and smell. If you aren’t as keen on Middle eastern flavours then just stick to the recipe)

I added 50g of fresh breadcrumbs (I made them by whizzing up a breadbun I had)

and added an egg, salt and pepper.

By now the onions were beautifully soft and once they cooled slightly, I stirred them in, mixed them round and started to make meatballs. The Bear was called into action… my poor Canon camera gets so much abuse with my sticky fingers but I really couldn’t subject it to meatball mix.

They had to be cooked in the fat left in the frying pan, turning them gently until they were browned

That only takes about 8 minutes – don’t worry, remember they do go back into the pan when you have made the tomato sauce. Take them out and put them to one side.

The recipe said use a courgette, thickly sliced but I only had baby courgettes, so I reckoned three of them would be the equivalent of a normal courgette… so they got sliced and gently fried for a minute or so

Before adding in a couple of cans of chopped plum tomatoes

… a teaspoon of Ras-el Hanout – a Moroccan spice blend that you can buy in most large supermarkets nowadays. You can make it yourself if you can’t find it – click on that link and it takes to a description and a recipe.

… and two teaspoons of honey

Once the tomatoey mix was soft, a tin of chickpeas was added and the stirred round

and then the meatballs put in

After that, the recipe said to make four hollows in the suace and crack eggs into them… I couldn’t really manage – maybe my sauce wasn’t thick enough? – anyway, I broke the eggs in and pulled the sauce away from underneath so the raw egg dropped down into the sauce.

The pan was covered for 5 minutes or so and left on a low heat to set the eggs……

And it was delicious! The cinnamony richness of the meatballs was perfect with the spicy tomato, chickpea and Ras-El Hanout spices and the beautiful egg was the perfect addition in terms of difference in texture and taste.

This is definitely something we shall be cooking again… and it was on our diet! Less than 400 calories per serving….if you stick to one serving that is….oh, it is delicious!

As Good Food doesn’t have a link to the recipe – here it is

Ingredients:

1 onion finely chopped; 3 tbsp of olive oil; 50g fresh breadcrumbs;  250g of lean lamb mince;  1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon; 5 eggs; 2 garlic cloves, sliced; 1 courgette thickli sliced; 2x400g chopped plum tomatoes; 2 tsp. of honey; 1 tsp ras-El Hanout spice blend; 400g chickpeas, rinsed and drained.

Fry the onion in 1 tbsp oil until soft, leave to cool. Mix with the breadcrumbs, mince, cinnamon, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp salt and lots of pepper then shape into about 24 meatballs. Fry in the remaining oil in the pan for about 8 minutes until bgrowned. Lift out and set aside.

Add garlic to the oil in the pan and fry till softened. Add courgettes, fry gently for about a minutes then add tomatoes, honey, Ras-El Hanout, seasoning and a couple of tbsp of water. Stir and cook until pulpy

Stir in the chickpeas and the meatballs. Make 4 hollows in the sauce and break in the remaining eggs. Cover and cook for 5 or so minutes over a low heat till the eggs are set.

Serves 4 Preparation 40 minutes, cooking 30 minutes

Per serving – 377 calories, protein 26g, carbs 20g, fat 22g, saturated fat 7g, fibre 3g, sugar 8g, salt 0.94g

An Accidental Soup…..Chickpea and Chorizo

It’s so unfair… this is the lovely, long  Easter weekend and we were planning to go North for a family get-together and I have a rotten cold. I can’t think straight, my tonsils are swollen, my chest is rattling and I feel like death warmed up. We can’t go home and inflict this on everyone so we are staying put.

I haven’t got much in to cook with because we were going to be away and, besides, I don’t really want to cook anything long and involved. I want quick and easy.  The weather is awful and we need to be warmed through.

When I go to the larder to see what there is, I have soup in mind. That would be easy to swallow and it would be good for me. Soup is always good for you when you have a cold or are under the weather… the steaming goodness opens everything up and makes you feel like you are in the land of the living again.

I find some tinned chickpeas on the shelf and in the fridge, I know there’s some chorizo. I can make soup with that, I think…..

I can picture it in my mind.. almost taste it…. hot and soothing, creamy smooth chickpeas with lovely chorizo slices to spike it up a bit….

So, I chop the onion and start to cook it

Next, I open the can and rinse the chickpeas…. that’s essential as I hate that gloopy stuff that collects round them in the tin. I know it is just the chickpea starch but it needs rinsing off. That and the briney stuff the chickpeas are in. If there’s flavour to be added, it will be me doing it, not the tin.

So, stir the chickpeas round to get them coated in the oniony juices and bits of onion (this is going to be the quickest soup ever as the chickpeas are cooked – all you have to cook, really, is the onion)

I want some smokey heat  in the soup, so a good heaped teaspoon of sweet smoked paprika will give a certain depth to it.

Stir it in and watch the colour change to a cheering golden glow

Add a pint or so of water and some stock granules

And then… well, this is when cooking while marginally delerious takes you down an unexpected culinary road……

I was thinking, in my slightly befuddled way, that chickpeas were lovely but if I added , say, ground almonds it would give a lovely rich dimension….thickening things. and adding flavour.

So I reached for one of my storage jars (which the eagle eyed amongst you may recognise as coffee jars… waste not want not, I say, and they are excellent to put dried goods in. Thing is, I never label them because I can see what’s in them. I wash them and peel the label off and then use them again. It keeps my larder looking neat and as all the jars are the same size they can be stacked on top of one another. Good thinking, eh?)

See? Looks like ground almonds.

Except it was fine polenta! I realised after I had poured some in that I had used the last of the ground almonds a couple of weeks ago….

Well, there was nothing for it but to carry on. I added some more water and stirred it round to cook it.

A good old whizz with the blender turned it all into a golden, silky soup. I tasted it to see if the seasoning needed any adjustment. I had to get the Bear to check as I couldn’t really be trusted because of my cold. A pinch of Maldon salt and it was judged to be pretty good.

The chorizo needed slicing

and adding to the soup – a few minutes to cook through was all they needed… and that was it.

From start to finish (including the three or four minutes where I stared at the polenta jar in puzzlement) that took about twenty minutes.

All I had to do was swirl some chilli oil over the top and add an extra few wafer thin slices of chorizo and there it was.

The prettiest bowl of soup. Golden yellow and glowing. Tasting absolutely delicious!

Sometimes you discover things by accident and you are really glad you did.

That soup was rich and tasty and my poor, sore throat felt soothed by it. I felt happier than I did when I started to make it.. .. and all that golden goodness filled me and relaxed me so I went back to bed and snoozed through the afternoon.

 And, do you know what? I will make it again and the next time I will deliberately add polenta.