Daring Cooks June 2013 - Meatballs

Rather an open challenge this month...  Shelley from C Mom Cook and Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to try meatballs from around the world and to create our own meatball meal celebrating a culture or cuisine of our own choice.

I told M about the challenge and she got excited, thinking, it turns out, that I would be making Italian style meatballs.  But, I had hatched a plan to make chipotle/spring onion pork meatballs, with a blackened pineapple salsa.  Not exactly what she was expecting.  Oh well.  As it turned out, she liked these too, so it didn't go too wrong.

Chipotle Pork Meatballs with Pineapple salsa, rice and beans.

Take 600gm pork mince, 3 spring onions, 3-4 canned chipotles and a tablespoon of the adobo sauce from the chipotle can.  Combine together.  Add an egg and some wheatgerm (1-2 tbsp) to bind it together.  

Generously coat your hands with flour, and place more on a plate.  Roll meat mixture into balls.  Roll each in flour and line them up.

Drop the meatballs into a pan with a thin layer of oil (rice-bran) in the bottom.  You will cook them long and slow, for 25-30 minutes, shaking them so they don't stick, and turning to brown all sides.

In the meantime, grab some pineapple (I used a tin of pineapple chunks in unsweetened juice.  Drain some, and drop them into a hot hot pan to blacken quickly.  Won't take long at all.

Set the pineapple aside.  Look back at the meatballs, make sure they aren't sticking!

Cook rice.  (You know how to do that. I used brown rice). Warm your beans (1x can, red kidney), with a couple tomatillos (adds flavour to the beans/rice).  Stir rice into beans.

Maybe make some bbq sauce for the meatballs, if you want.

Salsa!  Dice an avocado.  De-seed a tomato, discard seeds, dice the remainder.  Tear up some mint and coriander leaves.  Toss it all together. Squeeze a lime over it.  Add salt (the black here is Falk black salt, it is delicious)

Voila!