Kazza the Blank One

For my 50th, Fiona and Rob gave me Nagi Maehashi's cookbook - RecipeTin Eats - Dinner.  I'd never actually come across her site before, but I was amazed at the number of things I'd like to cook even after a quick flick through the book.  ** Edit: I actually had but didn't realise - I found a recipe for san choy bow from her! **

Anyway a few weeks ago I had a got at one - Saucy Baked Pork Meatballs - because we'd be doing our shopping at the markets that weekend and this recipe didn't call for anything special that I didn't have in the house or couldn't easily get outside a supermarket.  

It's a pretty complicated recipe.  Well not really complicated, but there's a fair bit going on.

This is everything for the sauce.  With wine.  Because the recipe called for some and well I suppose we'll need to keep hydrated while we're cooking right? ;)  Not too complicated, but it wanted dumb amounts of tomato paste (why not just used the whole damned tub haha).  And a lot of salt.

Saucy sauce bubbling away

Meanwhile let's get started on the meatballs.  Again not overly complicated, and again there's a lot of salt!

And they're done!

Next up we need to roast them for like fifteen minutes to lightly brown them.  I dunno, might be easier to just fry the things, but I suppose no harm in doing it while preheating the oven or something.  

Once the sauce is cooked through, I used the stick blender Annie gave me for Christmas one year to liquefy it, which worked really well.

Then you mix the whole lot in a baking dish..

Top with cheese..

And roast for twenty five minutes.  

We had them with salad and fresh sourdough bread.

The verdict?  Well they were very nice.  The problem is it took me two hours.  Which is wayyyy too long (I'm a lazy cook).  A lot of that time was spent precisely measuring things out.  If I were to do it again I'd be a lot more lax about measurements and would be able to throw it all together a lot quicker.  And there'd be less salt.  :)  

Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Me: yes, but only if I wasn't bothering to measure everything precisely so I could do it a lot quicker
Stu: yes, but then he didn't have to cook them ;)