Meatballs

Yesturday, myself and Sabi made meatballs, with a creamy sauce and mashed potato, so here is the recipe. 

This recipe will make enough for four people.

Meatballs:

500g Minced Meat (We used Beef)
1 Onion, finely diced, fried
1 Egg
250g White Breadcrumbs
Salt, Pepper, Parsley
250ml Milk
Knob of Butter

Combine your meat, egg, and breadcrumbs together and knead, adding milk to keep it moist, and to stop it falling apart. You then season this meaty mixture with your salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of parsley. It's up to you how much you season these, I guess it could also depend on which meat you use as to how much you season it.

The meaty mixture, ready to be rolled.

After you've combined all your ingredients thoroughly, its time to roll them into balls. With cold water, you can slightly dampen your hands, which I found helpful as sometimes the meat wanted to stick to my hands slightly before. The balls should be about the size of a walnut, and this mixture should roughly make 40 if you do it to this size.

Meatballs ready to be cooked

After they're all done, you can pop them into a large frying pan with a knob of butter (they can be fairly tightly packed in, how many you get in a pan just depends on the size of the pan and balls) on a fairly high heat.  After they have been cooked, you can put them into a large oven proof dish, so you can reheat them after they've all cooked. After a couple of minutes, one side will have been cooked, and will look dark brown. When this has happened, start turning the meatballs over, you might have to do this up to 4 times to allow them to cook through, and it will mean the majority of the meatball is dark brown.

Meatballs cooking

After this, you can serve them with mashed potato, or boiled new potatoes! The recipe for the creamy sauce is below, I forgot to take pictures of it however.

Creamy Sauce:
100-200ml Double Cream
200ml Beef Stock
Soy Sauce
Flour
Salt/Pepper

After your meatballs are all cooked and popped into an oven proof dish, turn the heat down slightly, and add in the beef stock, and add a splash of soy sauce. Cook for a little bit, and then add in your cream (add however much you want depending on how creamy you want it to be) Add a little flour in to thicken it slightly, again this is your preference here, and season with salt and pepper. Reheat your meatballs, mash up some potato and throw this in, and you're finished!

Apple Crumble

Ingredients -

300g White Flour
Pinch of Salt
200g Butter
Dash of Cinnamon
175g Brown Sugar

4 - 6 Bramley Apples (6-8 normal - Bramleys are large English cooking apples)
Brown Sugar (As much as you think is needed - Taste it!)
Cinnamon (Same as before!)

Weighing the sugar - we only had rather dark brown sugar, is best to use slightly lighter

Next, peel all of your apples, and then slice them up into smallish chunks, making sure to take out the core as you do so. Then wish a splash of water in a saucepan, gently boil / simmer the apples, bit of sugar and cinammon until it turns gooey (I like having a few small lumps of apple left in the apple mix, but its up to your preference here)

Sugar and Apples ready to be heated

Whilst this is happening, you can start to work on the crumble. Put the flour, sugar, dash of salt and cinnamon into a large bowl and mix. Then add your butter in cubes (room tempurature, not melted) in, and mix together with your fingers until all the butter has gone, and you're left with a crumbly mixture.

Crumbling together the dry ingredients

After this is done, hopefully your apples have all gooed up, if not don't worry and just wait till they have! After they have, put your apple mixture into a deep, large dish (similar to one shown below) and spread it so it's fairly even in the bottom. After this, put your crumble on top of the apple, I usually take a handful at a time, but I'm sure there are many other ways of doing this. Again, make this a nice even layer over the top, you can press it down slightly if you want a crunchier crumble, I prefere to leave it as it's fallen on top, which I feel is more crumbly!

Showing how the crumble and apple are in the dish.

After you've done this, put it in the oven (with most things its best to pre heat it) at about 180 degrees celcius, and bake in there until the crumble starts to turn a darker, slightly golden brown colour.

You can serve it hot or cold, with custard, or my personal favourite of cream.