Chilli beef meatballs in tomato, white wine and romero pepper sauce
Today I’ve tried out another recipe with minced beef (ground beef). This time it’s a recipe for meatballs. I tend to avoid making burgers because they always seem to fall apart but I have more success with meatballs. This recipe also used a new ingredient that I had never tried before – a Romero pepper. I think I bought the right thing, judging by pictures on the internet, but this pepper was actually called a “sweet, pointed pepper” in the supermarket:
Ingredients:
- For the meatballs
-
- 250g/9oz beef mince
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- ½ onion, finely chopped
- 1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
- ½ tsp chilli powder
- flour, for dredging
- For the sauce
-
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- ½ onion, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 romero pepper, seeds removed, chopped
- 1 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 tsp chilli flakes
- 150ml/¼ pint white wine
- For the rice
-
- 200g/7oz basmati rice, washed
- handful chopped fresh parsley
- handful chopped fresh dill
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Method:
- For the meatballs, mix together the beef mince, garlic, onion, egg and chilli powder in a bowl.
- With wet hands, shape the mixture into 4-5 golfball-sized balls and dredge in flour.
- For the sauce, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and sweat the onion until soft but not coloured.
- Add the garlic and the romero pepper and fry for 2-3 minutes.
- Add the remaining ingredients and bring to the boil. Cook to reduce the volume of wine by half.
- Add the meatballs, cover and cook for 15 minutes, turning the meatballs occasionally in the sauce, until cooked through.
- For the rice, place the rice in a saucepan and cover with 2½cm/1in cold water. Bring slowly up to the boil.
- Once the rice is boiling, stir once, turn the heat to very low and cover with a tight fitting lid for 10 minutes, or until all the water is absorbed and the rice cooked through.
- When the rice is cooked, stir through the herbs and season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Rub the oil over the inside of a small Pyrex bowl. Press the rice into the bowl, then tip out onto a serving plate.
- To serve, arrange the meatballs around the rice and pour over the sauce.
Substitutions and comments:
I reduced the amount of onion in the recipe – I generally tend to do this as my husband isn’t that keen on onion. I used real chillis instead of chilli flakes in the sauce. In my opinion there was way too much rice for 2 people – if the weight was dry weight. I use between 30 – 50g per person. When I reduced the wine I ended up reducing it too far – probably because I had a large pan, so I had to add more wine (oh no!).
Verdict:
This was very tasty. The pepper did taste sweeter than a bell pepper and we enjoyed it, but I don’t expect I’ll be buying one very often as it was more expensive than bell peppers. The meatballs were a nice flavour, and by virtue of stirring them very carefully I managed to keep them whole. Using wine as a base for the sauce made a nice change to using a tomato or beef stock base.
