A Blog from Greece – Life at The Lemon Tree on Crete
As easy as meatballs...
A little ball of meat, so scrummy! They have been made for hundreds of years, if not centuries. They can be pork, lamb or fish depending in which part of the world that you live in (and of course they can be of vegetables too but that then means they aren’t meatballs anymore but some other tasty combination). They can accompany soup, spaghetti, tomato sauce or be just by themselves, not forgetting serving them with the lovely Handras potato.

Of course you can buy them ready made in some supermarkets and pay a huge difference in price and taste. These can taste quite nice but when you make something yourself you will never turn back. The shop bought ones are mostly largely produced in bulk as in by the ton instead of the small amount like you would make at home or for use in the restaurant and thus they are full of preservatives et al.

I tried quite a few times back in the UK to make nice meat balls but gave up in the end because when they cooked they just used to break down and fall apart as the fat content was quite high. On coming to Greece we of course found that meatballs were on a lot of menus here and we thought it was a novel idea to put them on ours. For the past six years we have had quite a lot of success with them. We have had some very good comments about them in the process. We have served them to young and old; a friend of ours brought their grandmother and she approved of them heartily (Greek approval – especially from a grandmother – of a traditional dish means a lot!)  We normally serve them on spaghetti with a lovely Handras tomato sauce in a china ovenproof bowl, which is traditional for this sort of food.

You will require pork or lamb mince, I generally use pork mince and sometimes I use beef mince too. Here it is all of a good standard and freshly ground, you choose your meat and they put it through the mincer in front of you. It is wrapped in paper, you pay and that is it – you are ready to begin. I had not seen this in England what so ever; I would buy it in the plastic packet in most places or from the meat counter already minced and unless you went to a butcher you would not see it minced in front of you. I guess that is the difference now, I would source my ingredients differently if back in the UK and go to the butcher where they minced the meat in front of me. When we were in the UK Anita did not eat meat; one day I made two cottage pies - one from mincemeat one from soya mince. The one from mincemeat I had to drain off before I could do anything with it whilst the vegetarian one made a lovely firm cottage pie and after that I did not look back and from then on I was a firm believer in soya mince despite being a meat lover; we always used to use soya or vegetarian mince from then on. When I started eating Greek meat, I found the mince was lovely, with no fat. I reverted back to using this, happy to find a good fresh product.

Ingredients

0.5 -1kg minced pork or lamb
1-2 medium chopped onions
1 tspn garlic and ginger puree
Salt and pepper
Garlic (it’s up to you)-or garlic salt
4-6 oz fresh breadcrumbs     
Sprinkle of mixed herds from your garden
1 egg
I also throw in a handful or two in the mix of chopped vegetables, like leeks, that I have gently fried off; you can use any vegetable you like.

Method

Place mince in bowl add all dry ingredients (including vegetables you have prepared if using) apart from egg

Mix thoroughly and place in fridge for 12 -24 hours for flavours to develop and mature

Place kitchen wrap over top

Take out of fridge add beaten egg and mix thoroughly

If the mixture is too wet then you will need to add more breadcrumbs - add them slowly, similarly if it is a little too dry to work with, then add a little more beaten egg (in stages)

When the mix is easy to handle and brushes free from your hands it is ready to form into balls or your desired shape

Lay onto greaseproof paper sprinkled with flour to avoid sticking

Form shape till mix has gone – make them even so they all cook at the same time

Place thick bottomed frying pan on heat for several minutes until hot and slowly add meatballs until sealed and coloured

Finish off in a moderate oven until totally cooked  

Can be served with spaghetti, tomato sauce, potatoes or rice

It is up to you - they are lovely with anything!

There are many other ways of cooking them; if you like your meatballs soggy a traditional way is to cook them is in the tomato sauce in the oven; but I would still fry them off first I make these little beauties in a large batch as and when needed. So make your meatballs, sit down with some good wine or a can of beer, bread and potatoes; get stuck in and have a good fill!

Our emphasis in these blogs from Crete is on food because that is what we do at The Lemon Tree, but we aim in these little blogs from Crete to also give a reflection of life in a Greek Village on Crete. Simply put, we live here; have a family here and a business. Thus we encounter daily both the joys and tribulations of life in a Greek village, some of which are familiar to the whole of Crete and Greece, some of which are unique to village life; some which villagers alike share or  are experienced by us as settlers in this land. Alongside these writings you will find recipes and ideas about food.

For previous blog articles please click on the link at the bottom of the ‘blog page’ and if you are searching for a particular food recipe such as curry or food ingredient such as cabbage  – then type in the keyword in the search box on the website and Hey Presto! This will bring up the recipes that contain this ingredient.

We write the blogs together; mostly the food stuff is Mark and some of the other bits are Anita or what we come to through general chat (or heated discussion, depending on the day….) Mark is dyslexic - he writes a first draft, hands it over to Anita (who puts on her old English teacher’s hat) to redraft and develop, adding a bit here and there; this seems to work!

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