Quick Meatballs

Meatballs used to be a labour of love for me.  When I was cooking for a larger household, I would start cooking them on a Saturday in the morning and they'd be done at about the right time for our evening meal.  It was crazy but it was something I did with love.  It was a way of saying "I love you, I'm prepared to work for hours to make you this meal."

But cooking for yourself?  Even I find that hard to motivate so I've stripped back my original recipe from the combined beef and pork and the slow cooked sauce made with tomatoes, pepper, onions, etc, etc.  This is simplified but still delicious.  I would go so far as to say I barely notice the difference which then makes me wonder how I get those hours of life back...

With meatballs, I'm greedy.  I love the meatballs and sauce on their own.  When you look at the ingredients, it's not that unhealthy but tastes like you're having a much bigger portion than you actually are because it's only 2 sausages but you could make this go further by serving with pasta, then it would be a very thrifty meal.

Meatballs - Serves 1 on their own or 2 with pasta

Ingredients

2 Sausages, mine weighed 140g, 5oz for the two (see note below)
60g, 2oz Courgette (zucchini)
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp fresh basil
1 tbsp fresh parsley
250g, 9oz Passata
Olive oil or spray oil

Method

Grate the courgette and put in a bowl, push the sausages out of the skins, finely grate the garlic and chop the herbs adding to the bowl.  Get in with your hands and smoosh it all together.  Form into balls about the size of a small walnut and put on a plate.  If you want, you can cover and chill them at this stage.

When ready to cook, heat some oil or spray oil in a frying pan.  Fry the meatballs until starting to brown, you will probably have to do this in two batches.  Have a saucepan ready with a few tbsp of passata in the bottom of the pan.  Put the browned meatballs into the pan continuing with more meatballs as they are all browned.  Top with the rest of the passata.  Heat gently and cook on a gentle heat with a lid on until cooked through, approx 15-20 minutes.  Serve with cooked pasta if liked.  Reheat well.

Cheese is a must.

30 minutes work in all if you really get your skates on!

A note about sausages, the odd thing is they don't have to contain all that much meat by law.  Surprising really.  But the good thing is that there are a fantastic selection of good quality sausages with higher meat contents of 80-97% and they're not all that expensive.  Use a good meaty sausage for these meatballs, otherwise they won't have the flavour and may fall apart.


Linked to recipe of the week.