Lamb and Basil Meat Balls

As usual my decisions for what to have for dinner were ruled by necessity. I had lots of basil slowly loosing their turgidity (not just a food blog, a lesson too :-)). So having lots of ragu too, I thought having meat balls would be fun.

I finely diced a small onion (and probably only used half) and added it to the organic lamb mince (400g). From this I could tell how much onion to add, I wanted the meat by itself to "hold" the onion i.e. after a brief mix with a hand there was no onion left in the bowl when I lifted the meat. To this I added a couple of cloves of finely diced/crushed garlic, salt & pepper, and as much basil as you can realistically fit in. I could have added a little cumin here, but my Lazy gene kicked in and I could be bothered to... blah blah blah... I then added an eggs and got stuck in with my hand until the egg was completely incorporated. Keeping my hands moist with a bit of water roll bits of the mix on the palm of your hand. The water should stop them sticking to you.


This is the little fellows who went into the fridge for tomorrow's consumption, they're about the size of large button mushrooms. They've also been lightly dusted with flour; That is, dunked in flour and gently thrown from hand to hand to get rid of the excess. this is supposed to protect them from getting too dry. It also helps brown them.

Pan fried quickly to brown, then pour off the fat [or transfer the balls to another pan with the ragu] add the ragu (this way you get the little flavoured caramelised bits) and leave for about 10 minutes or so? Basically the balls are nearly cooked through through the browning process (depending on the size of your balls). You could leave them slightly longer to help marry the flavours... I kept some back for lunch the next day instead :-)

I served these with bread. Me = Lazy