Before I record our Italian (style) Meatballs, today Regan cracked her first egg, WITHOUT having to pick shell out afterwards. Something both of us was very pleased to see.

I’ve added ‘style’ in brackets as whilst these meatballs share much in common with those you get in Italy, we do them slightly, very slightly differently.

This recipe is for the Meatballs only, but we do like to serve them with a simple tomato, garlic and basil sauce, and the tomatoes you get from the markets when we’re in France are wonderful to make the sauce from and of course to eat just as they are.

We always make a decent batch of meatballs, and freeze some, so you can make a smaller batch if you wish, just divide the quantities accordingly. We usually make around 32 meatballs and freeze them in batches.

Meatball Ingredients:

700g of Pork (Shoulder works well); 300g of Beef (Skirt or flank is good). I always find it works best if the beef is lean and the pork has some fat.

2 tablespoons of Oregano (we grow and chop our own fresh this time of year, but wild Oregano dried works well); 1 Large bulb of garlic; 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of black pepper; 1 tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese; 2 teaspoons of parsley (again fresh or dried works well) and 1 large egg.

Method:

We use a mincer to mince the pork and beef through a number 6 plate. Then grate the garlic (chopping word well too, but grating gives a more intense garlic flavour) and add to the mince. Add the salt, pepper and oregano and work through with your hands to mix well (Regan’s favourite part). Once mixed together add the egg and the parsley and work through the mix the same as before.

Rest in the fridge in the bowl covered in clingfilm for around an hour, longer is ok, but try and leave for an hour.

We then try a little of the mixture just to make sure the balance/taste is ok. make a small hamburger type patty and fry off in a pan. Assuming it tastes good, them we’re ready to make the meatballs. Sometimes it may need a few more herbs or a little more garlic. Some meatball recipes i’ve seen include breadcrumbs, but the only time we add breadcrumbs is if the mixture is too moist.

To make the meatballs we keep things simple, but you could weigh each meatball to get them perfectly equal in size. We divide the mixture roughly in to 4 and then roll 4 long sausages out on a lightly floured work surface. We then divide each ‘sausage’ into 8.

Again with your hand lightly floured (if you put a small heap of flour in the corner of your work top, or in a bowl and simply dab your flat hands in the flour, then brush your hands together, you’ll have lightly dusted hands).

To make the meatball, place the piece of the mixture on one palm, and with the other palm  do a firm circular motion to make a ball. Apologies if that sounds basic and obvious, but sometimes because I’m cooking with our soon to be six year old I forgot that some will know this. Regan loves making the ball shapes and is very skilled at doing this now.

We put aside the ones we will eat today and the rest we lay out on a baking sheet, lightly greased and put in the freezer for around an hour. This stops them sticking together in a freezer bag. After the hour, put them in a freezer bag and return to the freezer and they’ll be ready to use for a easy midweek tea.

Like I said earlier we like them with a nice tomato, garlic and basil sauce, so we are mixing oregano, parsley and basil together which in my opinion works really well… in reality the predominant flavour is the pork, beef, oregano and garlic, but parsley always goes well with garlic at any time, doesn’t it.

We also serve it with garlic bread, a nice french baguette with our home made garlic and parsley butter… yum!