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The Best (& easiest) Baked Meatballs

Have you ever had a spray and wipe moment when you are unexpectedly having dinner guests in a couple of hours?  This is the kind of recipe that you need in your corner.  It is fantastic for feeding a crowd and it is the kind of food that you know everyone will love.

My secret to these meatballs is in the sausages.  Find a great butcher who takes pride in their sausages and you are on a winner.  Marino Meat in the Adelaide Central Market is my butcher of choice, check out their facebook page for a peek at meat and smallgood heaven.  If you don't have a fantastic butcher then add in some extra herbs and spices.

Serve the meatballs with a simple, well dressed green salad and finish the meal with a winning chocolate indulgence like my flourless chocolate cake or my super simple but impressive chocolate fondants and you will have friends for life.

 

The Best (& easiest) Baked Meatballs - Serves 12

Ingredients

1kg Awesome Sausages (I use chilli porchetta)

500g Veal mince

1 tsp dried chilli (or to taste)

1 tsp fennel seeds

3/4 cup semolina

3 eggs

Optional garlic & finely chopped onion

2 Tins chopped tomatoes or equivalent of your own tomato passata (I'll teach you how to make it at Kitchen Bootcamp)

1 Tbs Italian herbs

1 cup milk

Pasta or Zucchini noodles + parmesan cheese to serve

Other combinations to try

• 1 kg chicken mince + 250g thawed, drained & chopped frozen spinach + 100g pinenuts or slivered almonds + 100g good basil pesto

• Italian sausages + beef mince + 100g olive tapenade/pureed kalamata olives + dried chilli + paprika

• Merguez sausages + lamb mince + 2 tsp all spice + switch the semolina for cooked cous cous

• Lamb sausages + beef mince + 75g chopped olives + 100g crumbled feta cheese + dried oregano + fresh dill

• 1.2kg turkey mince + 2 large grated carrots + switch the semolina for 1.5 cups cooked jasmine rice + Tandoori paste added to taste (amount will vary depending on brand but 3-4 Tbs) + chopped fresh coriander

These are the kinds of tricks and tips I will be teaching you at Kitchen Bootcamp.  Class kicks off online tomorrow.  You don't want to miss out!

Tatum xx

5 HIIT Ideas for you to Try.

HIIT, otherwise known as high intensity interval training is essentially where you perform a series of exercises, or the same exercise repeatedly, with short breaks in between each set or sprint.

For the time you are exercising you push yourself close to your limit then use the short breaks in between to recover a little bit.  Each set or sprint gets harder to complete.

HIIT is fantastic for improving your cardiovascular fitness.  It can be done pretty much anywhere with limited or no equipment at all.  Best of all you can do it inside or outside, daytime or nighttime and you definitely don't need a gym!

Start by warming up, go for a light jog, run on the spot or jump rope for 5 minutes.

• Head to the park with the kids, choose one that has a good area for running.  Run as fast as you can for your chosen distance and walk back then repeat.  Set yourself a number of repetitions or a time limit.  Get the kids to race you for an extra challenge and easy bedtime ;) 

• Find a nice hill to run up.  I have a great inclined pathway near me that I use regularly for interval training.  Run up as fast as you can for as long as you can then walk back down.  Again, set yourself a number of repetitions or a time limit.  Challenge yourself by trying to get an extra repetition each time.

• Grab a skipping rope.  Skipping is great cardio, you use most of your muscles when you are skipping.  Make sure that you are engaging your core and skip for a minute or two at a time alternating with 30 seconds rest.  Your skipping will improve with time until you are skipping like you did when you are a kid.  I was a very uncoordinated skipper but plenty of practice sorted me out.  When you buy your skipping rope make sure that you get the length that is right for you and at that the weight works well for you.  You can buy them from the Heart Foundation here.

• That treadmill or exercise bike you have collecting dust in the corner is useful for HIIT too.  Use the same principle again go fast then slow down and rest.  On stationary equipment you can play with things like incline and tension to make it harder too.

• Visit YouTube to search for a multitude of HIIT workouts or just go straight to Fitness Blender for a really great selection of training videos.

HIIT sessions are not my favourite (I definitely get my biggest cases of the CBF's where it is concerned lol) but I do love the feeling when I am done and know how important it is for my overall fitness.  I do about 3 HIIT sessions a week.  My weapon of choice are kettlebells but they take time to learn to use properly. 

I also enjoy doing incline sprints and will do intervals on the treadmill or cross trainer at the gym 'if I have to' and probably groan and roll my eyes about it ;)

How about you?  Is HIIT something you have tried or might give a go now?  What did you think?  Do you love the exercise afterglow that you get from it or can't get past the 'I think I'm going to die' feeling?  What is your favourite HIIT routine?

HIIT is definitely not something to over think.  If you start reading about it around the internet you will come across a bunch of contradictory messages about whether it is something worth doing.  What is important to focus on is that you are raising your heart rate, improving your cardiovascular fitness and burning a few calories to boot. 

Don't worry about fat burning zones and all that jazz, set aside an amount of time that works for you and go for it.  Just focus on getting it done, enjoying the buzz and making small improvements each time!

Tatum xx

A Bowl of Bananas

Mr S was 6 in December.  The poor kid never got to try a banana until well after his first birthday.  A cyclone wiped out the crops so bananas were crazy expensive.  He makes up for it now though, bananas are his go to fruit.

Right now, if the action in your fruit bowl is anything like mine is those bananas you bought on Saturday are probably turning spotty already.  I have actually been buying lots of them because there are still plenty of Aussie bananas to be found cheaply at my market and they are perfectly kid sized.  However, mandarins are also in season and 3 out of 4 children in my house choose mandarins over bananas.

With my weekend's baking efforts exhausted I needed to whip something up last night for today's lunchboxes.  I made these chocolate banana brownies a couple of weeks ago but didn't write down the recipe, they were good but the small taste testers report that this batch is better.  These babies are gluten, dairy and nut free. 

I like using coconut flour with bananas because it's dryness works well in such a wet mix.  Likewise, there is enough moisture from the bananas and eggs that I didn't see the need for butter or coconut oil.  They work out to around 120 calories each so they are very satisfying if you are watching your numbers.

Chocolate Banana Brownies - Makes 12

Ingredients

500g-ish bananas

4 eggs

100g honey

1/4 cup raw cacao

1/2 cup coconut flour

1 tsp baking powder

Sunflower seeds to sprinkle on top

Method

Mash the bananas and mix with the eggs and honey until well combined, I just throw them in the kenwood with the paddle and turn it on.

Add the cacao and mix until just combined.

Mix in the coconut flour and baking powder.

Pour into a lined baking tray and smooth out.

Sprinkle the sunflower seeds over the top and bake at 170C for about 30 minutes.

Turn on to a cooling rack and leave to cool.

Whilst the brownies used up a fair stash of the bananas I still had more to go so I decided to see how whipping it with some fresh ricotta would go.  Turns out it was just about one of the best kitchen experiments I have had for a while.  I had to hold myself back from eating a second bowl. 

If you need a quick dessert for any reason, this is your new go to when bananas are in season, it would be easy to jazz up more by adding some chopped dark chocolate or making it summer in a bowl with sliced fresh pineapple and some toasted coconut chips.  Yum.

Banana Ricotta with Almonds - Serves 4

Ingredients

500g Ricotta

300g-ish bananas (peeled weight)

1 Tbs honey

60g almonds, toasted

Method

Put the ricotta, bananas and honey in a bowl and mix with electric beaters or with the whisk attachment of your mixer until it is nice and smooth.  If you are using your mixer you will probably have to scrape down the sides a couple of times.

To begin with it looks a bit grainy but the longer you beat it the smoother it becomes keep going for a couple of minutes until it has a silky texture.

Spoon into serving bowls and top with chopped toasted almonds, or whatever you want.

It is that easy.

Which do your kids pick first from the fruit bowl, mandarins or bananas or something else entirely?

Tatum xx

Dare to Dream Big

You know that idea your have had rattling around in your head, the nagging one.  It’s something that you want do but don’t really know where to start.  Let me help you, all you need is 15 minutes, a pen and a piece of paper and you are away.  It is amazing what a difference it can make to clarify your path forward once you have had a little brain storming session.

Sit down somewhere quiet and undistracted.  I find that having a coffee date with myself and my journal is a great way to get some thoughts on paper when my head is in a bit of a jumble.

Start in the centre of the page.  Write down what it is you want to do.  Scary part over, it’s out there now.

Now let’s make what you want to do more specific.  For example ‘Go to uni and get a degree’ is pretty airy fairy compared to ’Start studying law part time at Adelaide Uni in 2014’.

Next consider whether that goal is achievable.  Make some notes by asking yourself questions like, but not limited to:

• Do I currently have the time available to me to do this?
• How could I make the time to do this?
• Is it financially within my grasp within that time period?
• How will I come up with the money to do it?
• Am I physically capable of doing this?
• How would I prepare myself for the challenge?
• What things do I need to change to make this happen?
• Will I need someone to help me achieve this?

When you are thinking about whether your goal is achievable look for solutions within the questions you ask yourself rather than setting up roadblocks.  Each of these hurdles can become a smaller goal in itself and will help to form the pathway to achieving the end result.  If you centre your questions around the central idea of ‘How am I going to get there?’ then you will be mapping a pathway as you go.

Think about whether your goal is realistic.  This is different to whether it is achievable.  Here you are checking to make sure that there isn’t a showstopper.  Unfortunately what is realistically achievable for one person in not necessarily realistic for the next and these things are often outside of our control.  If there is something significant that stands in your way go back and redefine the end goal to reflect something that is realistically achievable.  Things may change and your redefined endpoint may become a stepping stone on the patch to your larger goal.

Make sure you add a time frame to your goal.  With my initial specific statement I gave a start point but not an endpoint.  Adding a ‘by when’ clause will give you more scope to visualise yourself at that goal.  Add milestones to your goal path, these will come from the questions you asked yourself about the goal being achievable.  Make some notes in your diary relating to smaller milestones and the to do list you have probably generated.

Finally consider how you will measure yourself.  Completing that law degree would be an obvious answer to my initial example but you might like to expand on that and add how you want to use that degree.

Dare to dream, it really is amazing what you can set in motion for yourself over a quiet cuppa.

Tatum xx

Slow Cooked Pork Ribs

Over the last few years our family has totally fallen in love with the melt in the mouth slow cooked goodness that is American Barbecue.  I have been promising to share this recipe for a long time, I was going to save it for Kitchen Bootcamp but, at the last minute, I decided to share it here.

Pork Ribs and Pulled Pork are our favourites, and plenty of eyes light up when I get the process going in the kitchen.  One of the best things about making a batch of ribs are the homemade baked beans that come with it.  There is no slop in a tin that even comes close to the goodness of homemade.

I get my ribs from the butcher in one of the Asian supermarkets in The Adelaide Central Market.  The ribs are meatier and cheaper than I have found anywhere else.

Beerenberg Worcestershire sauce is the bomb in these ribs, it blows all the other brands away.  Likewise Bundaberg ginger beer makes for the best flavour but feel free to substitute a full flavoured bottle of beer in its place.

Slow Cooked Pork Ribs & Baked Beans - Serves 6

Pork Ribs

Ingredients

3 Racks American Style Pork Ribs

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

1/2 cup soy sauce

1 tin tomatoes

1 375 mL bottle Bundaberg Ginger Beer

2 (or more), long red chillies, split along their length

400g chopped tomatoes

1 small head of garlic, washed and top cut off

Method

Put the ribs into a large, heavy saucepan and add the rest of the ingredients.

Put on the lid and bring to a simmer.

Cook until the meat is quite tender and starting to easily pull back from the bone.

Lay the ribs in a large baking tray and pour on enough of the liquid to give about an inch of coverage in the base.

Cover with al foil and put in a slow oven for about an hour.

I rarely cook my ribs for specific amounts of time either on the stove or in the oven.  If you are making baked beans too they will take longer to cook than the ribs will take in the oven but as long as you don't dry out the ribs you can put them in straight away and finish just before serving or leave them sit a while and put them in the oven later.

To finish the ribs remove the al foil and turn the oven up hot, cook for about 15-20 minutes to get some caramelisation on the ribs.  Alternatively you can pop them on a hot barbecue to finish.  You will need long tongs and will need to be careful that they don't stick because the meat will be soft and falling off the bone at this stage.

To serve cut the racks in to individual ribs and pile on to a large plate.

Baked Beans

Ingredients

3 cups dried beans (I vary what I use but Navy or Haricot are my usual suspects) washed and soaked overnight in lots of water.

4-6 rashers of bacon, chopped

1 large onion, diced

1 tin chopped tomatoes

Reserved liquid from cooking the pork ribs

Method

Tip the liquid from the saucepan into a jug, or something large enough to hold it.

Throw the bacon and onion into the saucepan and cook until it is softened and starting to caramelise.

Tip in the drained, soaked beans together with the reserved cooking liquid and extra tin of tomatoes.  Sometimes I add a second tin depending on how much cooking liquid was left.

Top up with enough water to cover the beans.

Leave to simmer, stirring occasionally until the beans are tender.

Cooking time will vary dependant on how long they have been soaked for.

Serve with the ribs together with large dill pickles and coleslaw.

The left over baked beans are perfect for serving in a shallow dish with a runny egg baked on top or alongside a traditional cooked breakfast.

I must apologise for the lack of photos.  I make ribs about once a month but it's not something I ever stop and photograph before we eat because otherwise I might miss out!

Have a fantastic week.

Tatum xx

PS Don't forget, Kitchen Bootcamp is only a week away, if you haven't signed up already all you need to do is use the paypal button over there on the right.  I will be opening the private facebook group later in the week so you can start chatting!