RECIPE: Easy sweet and sour pork meatballs

I used to love sweet and sour pork when I was a kid but these days I'm not so fond of capsicum (no-one in the house is) which prevents me from having that, and, I can't even remember the last time we had takeway Chinese.   Sweet and sour is a new kind of taste for our family and I can pretty much guarantee my kids eating anything if it's a meatball.  So instead of going down the deep-fried-battered-pork route I went to the shallow-fry meatball option.  These are great to make ahead too, take about 40 minutes from beginning to end I made some this weekend and have tucked them away for a night this week.. of course after we had all taste-tested one - and the reports from the frills - YUM MUM!

Ingredients:

Meatballs

500g minced pork

3 slices bread or 1/2 cups of breadcrumbs

1/2 red onion, finely diced

2 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dried)

1 sprigs fresh parsley (or 1 tsp dried)

1 egg

100g butter

3tb olive oil

Sauce

2 tb olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 carrot, finely diced

2/3 cup white vinegar

2/3 cup caster sugar

2 1/2 tb soy sauce

1 400g tin of pineapple rings in natural juice, drained and each ring cut into 8.

Method:

If you have a food processor (I love this mini-version - the Braun MultiQuick cordless) process your bread into the breadcrumbs, and then empty it into the bowl with the mince, then add onion and herb and process those also.  So quick and easy.  If you don't, cut up your bread, onion and herbs as finely as possible.

Combine all those dry ingredients with the mince and then mix through your egg.

Roll into meatballs about the diameter of a 50c piece.

Heat 100g butter and 3tb olive oil in a pan.  Don't worry too much, most of it is left behind, but it makes the outer of your meatballs stick together well and also get that yummy crispiness.

Add your meatballs and you'll need to turn them twice after about 5 minutes of frying away at a medium-high heat.

See? They crisp up beautifully, which is important for your sauce to stick properly.

Whilst the meatballs are getting crispy make your sauce by adding 2 tb olive oil to a deep frypan or skillet.  Cook off your garlic and carrot until soft.

Add vinegar, sugar and soy sauce and then lastly add the pineapple pieces. Simmer until it starts to thicken, only takes a few minutes.

As your meatballs finish their browning/crisping, transfer them to the pan with the sauce and coat them, turning them every two minutes or so until you have all your meatballs in the pan and they are nicely covered.

Serve with vegetables or rice.

RECIPE: Kick-ass smokey sausage and egg bake

This is a recipe that has many, many uses.  It's a brilliant hangover cure for breakfast, lunch or whenever.. it's a fabulous lunch on a cold day and it's a brilliant 'whoops I forgot to take something out of the freezer' or 'I don't have a lot of time' dinner.

It's warming, filling and delicious, and if you're lucky enough to have leftovers, brilliant just served on toast later.

If you have a cast iron frypan or skillet this is ideal - but if you don't, you can use a regular frypan and transfer to an oven proof dish.

(serves 5)
Ingredients:
5 chorizo sausages
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 brown onion, peeled and diced
3 large potatoes, diced
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 400g tin unsalted baked beans
1 400g tin diced tomatores
1 tsp paprika
chili, as desired
1 stalk fresh or 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 stalk fresh parsley
1/2 cup grated cheese
5 eggs

Method:
In your frypan or skillet, add 1 tb oil and fry onion, garlic and potato until the potato starts to gain crispy skin, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop up your chorizo and sweet potato, and ready the rest of your ingredients.  Preheat oven to 180 degrees c.

Then add the sweet potato and chorizo.  Add a swig of oil and some salt and pepper. Toss whilst it's cooking occasionally for about 5 minutes.

Add baked beans, tomatoes, oregano and chili if desired.  Leave to simmer for about 15 minutes on a medium heat.

It should become thick and saucy - stir regularly to avoid anything sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Once your sweet potato has softened, take off the stove and transfer to baking dish if your frypan or skillet is not oven safe.

Crack eggs over the top of skillet/baking dish and scatter parsley and cheese over the top.

Bake for about 8-10 minutes.  Remove from the oven and serve.

Absolutely delicious. Enjoy!

Meatball lovers - here's 5 recipes for your mealplan!

For me, meatballs are always a winner.  Kids love helping you roll them up, and will generally eat them if they've had a hand in making them.  You can experiment with flavours and tastes and even types of meat (Ok, maybe not horse as Ikea recently found out) but it's a great way to jazz up plain old mince of any kind.

I always find something comforting about meatballs, probably because they are one of my Mum's specialties and I guess my girls do too - because there are never objections to meatballs at our house!


1. Hungarian Meatballs
These are a beef/pork mince combination and are quickly prepared and then sent off to simmer in your slow cooker.  You can fast track these on the stove if you like too.

2.  Spicy Tagine Meatballs
These are made from beef mince (but you could use lamb) you can add extra yoghurt and have less paprika if you want less spice.  I love these and they are going on my meal plan this month for sure!  If you don't have a tagine, just a pot with a snug lid in fine!

3.  Smokey oven baked meatballs
So easy to prepare and pop in the oven - ready in an hour go-to-whoah!  I made mine with beef but I think you could use chicken or turkey mince too - I've made them with pork mince with spectacular results.

4.  Moroccan Turkey Meatballs
I never get tired of this one, my kids love it too, it's so flavourful and moist - which are two things that turkey isn't used to being called!  You can try this with lamb or beef mince too!

5.  Swedish Meatballs
If you are a fan of the Ikea Meatballs - leave those ones behind, these are BETTER.  Back me up those who have tried them!  They literally melt in your mouth so I would suggest making a double batch, because if you don't you will have only yourself to blame because I warned you!

So which one do you like the look of?  Have you tried any of these?  Let me know what you think!

Budget Busting: Turning leftover pork roast into delicious ragu - easy!

I hate wasting food.  Absolutely despise it.  Whenever I clean out the fridge it's a shame I bring upon myself.  Why did I buy so much? WHY didn't we eat that? WHO put this in here?  Who left this container with ONE STRAWBERRY in it??.. Ok, I'm getting carried away but I'm sure you get my drift!?  It's confronting seeing how much food you can throw away as a family.

Hubby isn't so great at the meal planning and I've not been around enough to do it or enforce it but that's all changed my friends!  I'm back onto it with a vengeance.  Now GoogleDocs is my friend - I create the spreadsheet and share it with hubby.  I pick it up on my phone when we go shopping.  (You just need Google Drive on your phone - available on iTunes and PlayStore for free!)

Love it.  It also means I can copy and paste the recipes we're going to use and hubby and I can just click on them when we need.. perfect.

OK, so onto this recipe.  I got carried away at the butcher on the weekend and bought a pork roast waaaay too big for us, like, twice the size we needed....   So after I carved up the leftover pork I made last night I had to come up with a plan for it, because we were never going to eat it cold or on sandwiches... So I thought, ragu!

This is such an easy solution, nothing stopping you from doing it with beef or even lamb.  If using beef or lamb I would go red wine instead of white..

You'll need a food processor.  If you are in the market for one, I can (and have many times) hand-on-heart recommend the Breville Kitchen Whizz Pro.  It's got a motor that's guaranteed for 25 years, and that cannot be argued with!  I do love it and use it often.

Now I made a huge batch - which has made 3 more meals for us... (great for lasagna or just with pasta) so you don't have to have a huge amount of pork to make this worth your while - do it with as little as 400g, and cut my recipe in half.

Ingredients
1 brown onion, peeled
1 celery rib, strings removed
2 cloves garlic, peeled
3 small carrots,topped and tailed
800g cooked pork
2 tb olive oil
1 cup dry white wine (I used reisling)
800g tinned diced tomatoes
200ml water
2 tb tomato paste
12 leaves basil, chopped
2 sprigs oregano, chopped
1 sprig parsley, chopped

Method
Using your food processor or a knife, thinly slice your vegetables. It doesn't matter how big it is or if it's in ribbons, it's going to cook down in your dish..

One of the things I love my food processor is the slicer attachment allows you to choose the thickness of what your chopping with this dial.  If you don't have one of these just slice as thinly as you can.

Sweat these off in your stock pot or large pan with the oil, and add the wine and let it simmer.

Change the attachment on your food processor to processing blade and add your pork.  Whizz until ground.

 Now add the tomatoes, water and tomato paste to the pot.

I used 4 x 200g tins of tomatoes and then poured in 2 x tins of water afterwards.

Add your processed pork

And then add your chopped herbs.

Pop the lid on and let it simmer for 1.5  hours on low heat - you could take it off after an hour if you needed to.

I won't lie to you, this smells sooo good you want to eat it straight away.  I'm going to pop some into some friends who is going through a rough time at the moment - and keep a batch for us. Winners all around!

So there's my leftover triumph for this week! What's your favourite leftover to use/eat?

Slowcooker pork loin with instant apple sauce!

When I was feeling poorly last week - the last thing I could face was anything that was going to take me more than 15 minutes to prepare.  I had very distinct short bursts of energy  - so slowcooker came to my rescue with a pork baked dinner that I didn't need to baste every half hour.

Because really with pork you do have the tendency for it to go dry very quickly and the best pork there out there is the pork that's moist without tasting fatty.  Throwing this in the slowcooker delivers that and then crisp it up in the oven for a shorter period gives you the caramelisation you love.

Putting your potatoes and apples and onions underneath your pork also gives it a gorgeous sweet taste and those potatoes and onions get lovely and caramelised too - not to be missed - and your apples become the build in apple-sauce.. I mean how can you lose?

Ingredients:

6 red rascal (or any other hard potato) cut in half

1 large brown onion, cut in quarters

2 large pink lady apple, cut in quarters

1 kg pork loin  - if it is stringed or netted, remove

2 sprigs parsley

1 tb dijon mustard

1 tb brown sugar

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

Method:

Cut up all your onion, potato and apples..

Scatter them somewhat evenly on the bottom of your slow cooker

Make your rub by mixing together mustard, garlic, roughly chopped parsley and brown sugar.

Place your pork loin on top of your potatoes, onion and apples, then rub the mixture over the top.  Put the lid on and put it on low heat for 3-4 hours or high for 2 1/2 hours.

If your slowcooker insert is oven proof and actually fits in your oven (Can't wait to move to our new house, bigger oven!) transfer dish to the oven

If not, take out your pork loin and then transfer your veges to an ovenproof dish and then place the pork loin on top.

Turn the oven up to 160 degrees (no lid) for 2 1/2 hours.

The crackling will caramelise as will your potato and onion and make a gorgeous apple gravy in the bottom of your tray  - win!

Looks gorgeous right? Leave to rest for about 10 minutes before carving.

Make yourself some greens and dinner is ready!  The pork will need to sliced thick, it falls apart so easily!

Slowcooker BBQ pork - 3 ingredients!

A busy Mama just doesn't have time sometimes to lovingly cook a meal for an hour or more - sometimes it's got to be quick and dirty.  This is one-such-recipe.  Bung it in, throw a couple of things in and walk away.   It taste absolutely delicious and leftovers for lunch on bread rolls (or even hot on buttered roll...drool!).


Ingredients
1 boneless pork shoulder (mine was 1.2kg)
1 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup brown sugar


Method:
Put your pork shoulder in the slow cooker, pour over the Worcestershire sauce over the top and then pack the brown sugar on top.

Place on high for first hour, remove cover and baste, then turn down the slowcooker to low for a further 3-4 hours.

Serve and dribble sauce over the top, it will literally fall apart and melt in your mouth!  I serve this with leftover lazy-as-sin potatoes!