My easy carrot meatball spaghetti

One of the foods I like is meatballs. There's some form of a meat-related ball, eg. potato balls with meat, eaten different ways in what seems like almost every type of cuisine. Meatballs are easy to make successfully and all kinds of flavours can be achieved with different additions to the meatball. I've made Swedish meatballs and kofta, but on Wednesday I made my carrot meatball spaghetti, using everyday larder items and some of the multi-coloured carrots we got with the veg box delivery.

To make the meatballs, I mixed:
400g ground beef
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp allspice
1tsp ground black pepper
60ml milk
1 egg
50g breadcrumbs (I used boxed breadcrumbs)

Shape into small balls and placed them in an oiled baking tin. They will need to firm up a bit or they'll fall apart during cooking. I clingfilmed them and put them in the fridge while I continued my preparations.

The carrots came in different colours: purple, white and regular. When peeled the purple carrots were a rich deep purple, almost black, with a bright orange core.

Peeled purple carrot on left

I peeled four carrots and sliced them with my mini food processor.

Quartered two onions and ran them through the food processor again.

Lovely machine-sliced onions. I lack knife skills, but fortunately gadgets exist. Cooking dinner is not Masterchef, lack of knife skills shouldn't deter one from attempting to cook.

I took the meatballs out of the fridge and started frying them in my handy little electrical frying pan. I like it because of the sliding temperature adjuster, which makes me feel safer when cooking things like meatballs. I always worry a bit about cooking them all the way through.


Then put the sliced onions on and fry those together.

While frying and ensuring that the beef is cooked through, I started boiling the spaghetti and washed and quartered four tomatoes. I chucked those on top.

Opened a can of tomatoes and put that in too. I stood over it mixing for some time, making sure everything was cooked and adding pepper. Then I put the lid on, turned the heat down and let it simmer for a while.

Carrot meatball spaghetti.

The purple carrots are better and have more of a sweet carroty taste than regular carrots. I am now a fan of the purple carrot. I could try to grow them despite this year's carrot failure. My carrots looked like little, malformed people.

Tapas and Boxhill

I finally did tapas.

I'd got some padron peppers and peppers stuffed with squid from Delicioso. They have all kinds of Spanish things!

I had a sudden desire to eat tapas about two weeks ago, but I'd only had tapas when we went on holiday to Barcelona last year. Apparently there is only one decent (decent, not good) place for tapas in London, and we don't know which it is. We hear it's in Waterloo. I was also inspired by the Jamie Oliver book where he goes to Spain and things, and he's done a couple of pages about tapas. It's a pretty good book, all the stuff I've tried from it turned out lovely. I especially like that there's a few different meatball recipes. Meatballs are really useful and easy to do, you can have them in so many ways as well.

I did very little for the tapas. I fried Padron peppers, heat up the peppers stuffed with squid, fried some sliced artichokes from a jar with some honey and dried thyme, and cut some Manchego cheese.

The peppers stuffed with squid aren't that nice.


Not so nice. Very tomato-ey.

Blackened Padron peppers, fried and sprinkled with sea salt:


Manchego cheese, with honey and dried thyme:



Sliced artichokes, with honey, dried thyme and ground pepper:



Truffle oil with ground black pepper, for dipping bread in. We had part of a baguette as well:




I've kept the leftovers in the fridge and might possibly assemble it into a sandwich for lunch tomorrow? Tapas sandwich.

I'm encouraged by this and will have more tapas meals, we still have a bowl of Padron peppers sitting in the fridge and must use it soon. I plan on making patatas bravas in the future.

Yesterday we went to Boxhill, which is about an hour away on the train, and had a lovely day. It's an idyllic National Trust nature-y hill named after the Box plant., and has a few different walking paths to go on: a Long Walk, Short Walk, Nature Walk, and Riverside Walk. We went on what was pretty much the Riverside Walk to get there from the station and back, and when we got to Boxhill itself we went on the Nature Walk.

The good thing about the Nature Walk is that it's not a monotonous walk, you go from one bit to another. There's a foresty bit, a dirt path bit, places to rest and admire a scenic view, and a very nice golden valley. It's also quiet. Lots of people who got on the train at London got off at Boxhill, but most people seem to accumulate at the mount, and start having their picnics and things, so the walks are very peaceful.

I plan on going again, possibly in the summer. I've been once before and there were little orchids and blackberries and strawberries growing wild. Only some tiny purple orchids are out right now, there are exciting orchids yet to come. Tiny ones that pretend to be bees.

James in a hole:









We also saw a bee-fly. It looks like a small bee with a long nose and makes a humming sound. I'm not sure that you can see it in this picture:



It's a type of fly, but feeds on nectar like a bee. But it isn't a bee. There's lots of them.

You can see its mighty shadow.

Fried beef noodles

I made fried beef noodles instead of kway teow. Same concept, slightly different ingredients.

I didn't have shallots, so I used one regular onion, about 5 garlic cloves and many dried red chillies (African bird's eye, from the African groceries shop).

First step: blend them up with a little water to make a paste.



I love my little food processor.

Fry strips of beef. Drain.

Add noodles.

I used these:

Add paste and mix:

Add light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and oyster sauce, according to taste:

Fry:

Fried beef noodles!!

The cat, we put her out and she returned.

London Fashion Weekend

Last week, I went to London Fashion Weekend with James. We saw the Fashion Weekend catwalk, where a lady summarises the 'key trends' for you, and then there's a little catwalk section that illustrates this.



I think this is the 'Black Swan' trend. I like Aranofsky, wasn't a huge fan of the movie though.



Bora Aksu catwalk bit.
In between they explain the hair and makeup trends to you. These hair and makeup trends, they rotate just enough to distract you.



The 'brights' trend, and



Mark Fast, designer of tight knitted things.



Final model walkout.

London Fashion Weekend is good for getting really good basic accessories, like hats, and nice items of clothing that are a bit different to what's in the shops, and at a much better price than they normally would be.

I got a Lowie hat and a dress with lovely fabric, by corey lynn calter. The Lowie hat is ethical, handmade, bright green and ten pounds.



Thumb!



It's silky. It's not flawless: I'll have to wear a slip under it and it's too thin for right now, possibly in the near future when it warms up a bit.

On Tuesday I made this:

It's not fancy, it's really easy and I used a pasta sauce.



We like the Paul Newman pasta sauce.



Proceeds go to charity!

I have some butternut squash in the freezer, and roasted some of that, as well as some unpeeled garlic cloves. After roasting I popped out the garlic cloves into the pasta and mixed the squash in. I also added little cubes of Comte cheese while the pasta was simmering. I got it from Sourced Market at St Pancras station, they get theirs from Neal's Yard Dairy.



Also in the background is my beautiful Mexican oilcloth tablecloth.

This cheese, it's great, but I think the Comte cheese that I'd got from Borough Market is better. The thing is, most Saturdays I like waking up late and chilling, or I have other things to do, so is a bit of a hassle. I'm not sure what the stall's called either, I just kind of wander around tasting all the cheese until I get to the right one.

It was a flavourful pasta dish but not very colourful, most of the ingredients are yellow.

Claypot chicken rice casserole!

The cat is still here. He likes 'ocean fish pate'. It's one of those cans with those tab-tops that break off. I had to use a can opener. The pate made him really excited.

We ended up not going out today and I cooked the claypot chicken rice casserole instead. It's amazing! You have to make it.

As always, I substituted with what I had: I used dark soy sauce with a splash of oyster sauce and cornflour (instead of cornstarch) in the marinade, and didn't use Chinese sausage.



Hob-cooking, just before baking in the oven.



Round cast-iron casserole from Procook. It's a pretty deep casserole for just the two of us and a little dish like this, but it'll be especially useful for cooking a large batch for lots of people.



What's left!

Weekly Menu - Feb 21 2011

I'm planning our weekly dinner menu on this blog, my blog about homely things. Hopefully this will get me more organised about buying groceries, cooking, and bringing a packed lunch to work.

Two of my planned meals are from Nigella's Kitchen book which I have and love. It's full of quick, easy recipes ideal for a weeknight or busy weekend. I like browsing through cookbooks when I'm chilling out, but you can find the most of the recipes in the book online.

Monday
Cajun chicken pasta: this pasta is amazing and easy to do. I use a mix of generic cajun seasoning and the Habanero Cajun Seasoning From Hell.
Salad

Tuesday
Takeaway night

Wednesday
Nigella's Lone Linguine with white truffle oil: James will be in Oxford on Wednesday for a Mogwai gig, so I'll be cooking a lonesome mushroom-based dinner for me. I'm making Nigella'a truffle oil pasta, but I plan on mixing it with some mushroom pate as well, as I'll be going to a one-day course instead on museum tours near King's Cross and can pick up the pate on my way home. The Pate Moi pate is brilliant but hard to get. You can get it from Selfridges, a deli in King's Cross/St. Pancras station, and Borough Market on Saturdays. Be warned that it sells out really quickly from their Borough Market stall.

Thursday
Quick tom-yam prawn stir-fry noodles.
Salad

Friday
Chinese 'Claypot' chicken rice casserole: Amazing casserole! So so easy, and one of our favourites. I make a few adjustments: I cook it without the chinese sausage, and with oyster sauce instead. I also use chopped ginger instead of grated ginger (because it's easier, and bits of ginger get stuck to my grater and make it more difficult to clean). I serve it with cut bird's eye chilli (or any other hot chilli).
Crunchy shallots

Saturday
Going out.

Sunday
Lamb with redcurrant and clementines
Sweet potato mash
Green beans
Apple crumble