Chicken Spinach Feta Meatballs Recipe

I wrote a post ages ago about my new discovery of Pinterest (original post here). By now, it's not a new thing and everyone I know seems to be on it. But I do keep discovering bits and pieces and things that I love. You're welcome to go and browse over my pins and see what's what, and go look at some of the people I follow as well as they all have amazing pins as well.

One of the things I have recently discovered on Pinterest is this recipe for chicken-spinach-feta meatballs. Oh My, they are deeeeeeelicious! Seriously, I have been making them loads since I discovered them a few weeks ago. I've adapted the recipe slightly as I didn't have the correct ingredients the first few times I made them and I quite like the way they turned out. They are super duper easy and are ready with hardly any fuss. Thought I'd better share the recipe with you...

Chicken Spinach Feta Meatballs

Ingredients:

500g chicken mince (I use turkey mince and it's fine)
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
3 tbsp finely chopped spinach
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt (I use less but that's because I don't much like salty food and feta is quite salty)
1/4 tsp ground pepper (I use more...)
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/4 cup feta cheese

All of the above measurements are to taste - more, less, whatever tickles your fancy! The original recipe (here) used fennel seeds and cayenne pepper and I'm sure is even more delicious, but I'm happy with my version.

Method:

1) Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly in a large bowl. I find it is much easier if you get your (clean) hands in there for your mixing.
2) I use about a tablespoon's worth of the mixture for each ball, but again, you can be the judge. Take a small portion and roll it into a nice spherical shape. Put it on the side and do the next one.
3) Once you have all the mixture rolled into balls, swirl some oil to cover the bottom of a frying pan but not so much as to immerse them. (ie about a tablespoon)
4) When the oil is hot, fry the meatballs in batches until they are golden all over and cooked through. Drain them on kitchen roll and cook the next batch.
5) Eat them. Yes, they are that simple!

Seriously easy, seriously tasty and I am a little addicted... Go over to ItsyBitsyFoodies website for some more amazing tasting recipes - I have my eye on quite a few of them!

Using up the last of the Turkey...

Anyone STILL trying to eat up all their leftover turkey? If you are - I'm so sorry, you must be totally sick of it by now! But not to fear; I have a solution for you...

Jamie Oliver's Asian-Inspired Turkey Salad is absolutely DEEEE-licious!  I saw one of his Christmas shows and this recipe really took my fancy. As I'm in the fortunate position not to have cooked the turkey or have weeks of leftovers, I used chicken thigh fillets instead - I just cooked them first before starting the recipe. Anyway, I'll stop waffling - try it, try it, try it! It's absolutely fabulous. Oh and just in case you can't work it out from the picture, the recipe is here: Jamie's Asian-Inspired Turkey Salad

My new favourite recipe - it has loads of yummy flavours in it and I could just drink the dressing!

Quick Tuna and Cannellini bean recipe

Ever have that feeling that you just cannot be bothered to cook? I do all the time - or rather I do when it's just me around on my own. I usually end up eating a piece of toast or, if I'm very lucky, an omelette. But last night I decided to do something majorly simple but a bit more adventurous. OK not very adventurous at all, but at least it was quick and required minimum effort and, more to the point, tasted great.

Quick Tuna and Cannellini Bean Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 tin of cannellini beans, drained 

1 small tin of tuna (ethically sourced of course)

4 tbsp red onion finely chopped

1 tbsp parsley, chopped finely

6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Cook the cannellini beans in some salted water until soft enough to eat. Drain them and allow to cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile combine the onion, parsley, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper in a jug / bowl / whatever you usually make dressing in.

When the beans are at room temperature, flake the tuna on top and then drizzle the dressing over it. 

Super simple, easy and pretty tasty too. 

Silent Sunday

Homemade milkshake

Last week Tesco totally messed up my usual order - they substituted fresh fruit for frozen fruit and because of the packaging, I didn't realise until too late... we ended up with loads of squishy fruit in the fridge which I had accidentally defrosted without realising it was meant to be in the freezer. Yuck. There went my great yoghurt with fresh fruit breakfasts...

BUT! I came up with a plan... I used to make my own fruit juice quite a lot. I'm not lucky enough to have a juicer machine but it's fairly easy if you have a blender. So I made up some fruit juice (yum) and then had a bit of an inspiration.... MILKSHAKE! ooooh....

I'm not a fan of milkshakes generally as they tend to taste very artificial - well certainly the ones at MacDonalds do, and also I'm not a massive fan of ice-cream either. But surely, homemade milkshake can't taste artificial? And it doesn't HAVE to have ice-cream, does it? So I decided I would make my own personalised version.

Looks good? Tastes good too...

Thought I would share the incredibly complicated recipe with you:

Summer Fruits Milkshake

Ingredients:
3/4 glass of semi-skimmed fresh milk
about 4 tablespoons of summer fruits
teaspoon of sugar.

Preparation:
1) Put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl / measuring jug and whizz up with your blender. If it tastes too milky add a bit more fruit or a bit more sugar.

You can drink it straight off, but I'm a bit fussy about things being too thick and bitty so:

2) Pour the mush through a sieve into a glass - you will need a spoon to move the pips out of the way and allow the milkshake to pass through and I had to do it in 2 bits, emptying the extra pips out of the sieve in between.

Voila, tasty homemade milkshake. OK fruit'n'milk drink. But still probably quite healthy and a lot better for you than shop bought stuff as it has no extra ingredients in it. Enjoy!


Oh, as a side-note: I also made raspberry and fruits of the forest milkshake. I'm sure you can use any fruit you wish to really. Although apples tend to puree so possibly not them, and I can't imagine orange and milk being a good combination...

Mmmm-nom-nom Easy Felafel

If you saw my Goals post recently you will know that one of my goals is to try new recipes more regularly (original post here). I have to admit this isn't a new recipe - I discovered how to make felafel a few months ago and it's become a bit of a regular in our household. But I thought I'd share the recipe with you - it's so quick and easy and is SO tasty I think you'd be missing out if you didn't try it! So here you are - easy falafel:

Felafel Recipe

Serves 4
Takes about 40 mins beginning to end

Ingredients:
2 x 400g tins chick peas drained
1 medium onion
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground chilli
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
salt & pepper
3 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley (flat leaf)
1 egg beaten
75g / plate of wholemeal flour
vegetable oil for shallow frying

Instructions: 
1) Put the chick peas in a liquidizer and reduce to a coarse paste. Put the paste into a mixing bowl.
2) Add the onion, garlic, cumin, coriander, chilli, caraway, salt & pepper and parsley and mix them all together well.
3) Make the mixture into small balls and then flatten them to make small flat cakes.
4) Heat some oil (make sure it's REALLY hot)
5) Dip the felafel patties into the beaten egg and then coat with wholemeal flour.
6) Shallow fry the felafel for about 5 minutes until crisp and brown.
7) Drain on absorbant kitchen roll and serve with pitta bread, salad and natural yoghurt. (I usually make tzatziki with ours - mint, cucumber, yoghurt, lemon juice, plenty of salt & pepper mixed)

Et voila! C'est trés facile... not to mention scrumptious!

Silent Sunday

Doesn't look exciting but... it's HOMEMADE curry powder and is SO good!

Sweet Chilli Prawns Recipe

Mmm nom nom! I made a great dinner last night even if I do say so myself. Sweet Chilli Prawns. They were absolutely yummy so I thought I would share the recipe with you. The recipe came from a book called Bowl Food that my sister gave me a number of years ago. It's my favourite cookbook and some of my favourite recipes come from there (Yakiudon and Jambalaya being some of my favourite - I might share them with you sometime too...). I haven't made this recipe before as I'd been put off by the length of ingredients, But while considering what to eat this week as I was doing the weekly shopping list, I came across this and realised that most of the ingredients are already in my store cupboard / fridge and I'd bookmarked it ages ago to try out. So I decided to give it a go tonight and it was REALLY easy!  Seriously, if you can get hold of the ingredients and you like prawns you should give it a go. 

Sweet Chilli Prawns (Serves 4)

What You Need:
1 kg raw prawns (I used 2 packets)
2 tbsp peanut / groundnut oil
large chunk of ginger cut into thin strips
2 cloves garlic crushed / chopped finely
5 spring onions cut diagonally
1/3 cup (80ml) chilli garlic sauce
2 tbsp tomato sauce
2 tbsp dry sherry or Chinese rice wine if you can get it (I used sherry)
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 tsp cornflour mixed with 1/2 cup (125 ml) water

What to Do

1. Peel / devein the prawns if you need to. Heat a wok til it is very hot, add the oil and swirl to coat.
2. When the oil is smoking, quickly throw in the ginger, garlic and spring onion.
3. Stir fry for a minute and then add the prawns. Stir fry for 2 minutes until the prawns start to turn pink.
4. Remove the prawns and set aside for the next bit...
5. Put the chilli garlic sauce, tomato sauce, sugar, vinegar, sherry, soy sauce and cornflour mix into a bowl and whisk it together. 
6. Put the mixture into the wok and heat, stirring until it begins to thicken. 
7. Add the prawns and cook for another minute or two until they are cooked and heated through. 
8. Serve with noodles or rice  and enjoy! 

Oh and if you ever see it in the shops or online, you should try out Bowl Food - I've tried lots of the recipes in it by now and I have not yet had anything which wasn't absolutely delicious. As I said, jambalaya and yakiudon are among my favourites, but Pad Thai, Paella, Sri Lankan Chicken Curry and Cauliflower soup are pretty awesome too...

Find it on Amazon here