Today's recipe brings me so many amazing memories of our trip to Paris in 2015. We visited many places in Paris during our stay and once Jany's French friend and colleague Robert invited us to his home. We stayed in his home for a night before we went on a two-day trip to Lisieux with his family. That night Robert's wife Emilia served us yum dinner with French and Romanian dishes. (They were originally from Romania and settled in Paris). She served us these meatballs with rice and it was so delicious. I got this recipe from her before leaving Paris and tried it once after coming to Chennai. It turned out very well and I wanted to post it on the blog from then. However, I missed to post it here these many days. Recently, I found the handwritten recipe note(written in French and translated into English) handed over by Emilia. The very next day, I tried and clicked it. Finally, I am here with the recipe:
Ingredients:Chicken Mince - 250 grams
Rice - 1/2 Cup
Eggs - 2
Big Onion - 1
Tomato Puree - 1/4 Cup
Garlic - 3 Cloves
Carrot - 1(small)
Cooking Cream - 1tblsp
Olive Oil - 3 tblsp
Dried Mixed Herbs - 1 tsp
Pepper powder - as required
Salt - as required
Method:
1. Wash and soak the rice for an hour. Chop the onion and grate the carrot. In a pan, add the olive oil and saute the onion for 5 minutes or until it turns transparent. Along with this add the grated carrot.
2. Now add the minced chicken, soaked rice and mix it all together. Along with this add the finely crushed garlic. Cook it in medium flame for 7 to 10 minutes. (keep stirring if required)
3. At this stage add the tomato puree, mixed herbs, salt and pepper.
4. Add 1/2 cup water and cover cook until the water content completely dries up. By now the rice will be half cooked. Switch off the flame. Cool it for 5 minutes and then add the egg + cream.
5. Apply oil on your hands and make equal sized balls as shown below. Arrange it on an oiled baking tray. Preheat the oven at 200-degree Celsius and bake it for 15 to 20 minutes.
Serve this warm with some salad.
- If you don't prefer rice in the meatball, you can completely skip it. In that case, just mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and add 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs to it. Now, make balls out of it and bake it or deep fry it. You can skip the tomato puree for this method.
- You can replace the carrot with cabbage or potato.
- You can replace chicken with pork, lamb or beef mince.
- Also, if you prefer spicy meatballs then add chilli powder as needed. But the taste will be modified and it will be more like an Indianized version.
Happy's Cook - Divya
Interesting. Addition of rice is kinda new for me but I guess that will make the meatballs crunchy and yum :)
ReplyDelete