Spaghetti with Swedish Meatballs

Hey friends,

It's been a long time since I posted anything and I have no one to blame other than my procrastination. Alipurduar has made me lazy, well, lazier than usual. I promise a regular update from now on because I really need some discipline in my life - like posting a new recipe every Monday or something like that - because everybody knows Mondays are the worst and you need a pick-me-up. And what better pick-me-up is out there other than food! I, at least, whole-heartedly believe in the philosophy of 'we live to eat' rather than the other way round.

So, here it is (and though it's not Monday), a brand-new recipe - Swedish meatballs with Italian spaghetti - a relatively easy recipe which looks as well as tastes wonderful. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did on a wintry evening along with Bhutanese peach wine Zumzin. Ah...that's heaven right there :)

Ingredients:

Italian spaghetti (for two people I took two around 100 grams. I measured it by hand, making a ring with my thumb and forefinger. Remember pasta of any kind tends to be heavier than noodles. If you want to know more about how to measure spaghetti or any dry pasta by hand, visit here)
Minced chicken (150 grams)
2 white bread (without crust)
1 cup of full-fat milk
1 egg
2 cups of chicken stock (See my recipe for chicken stock here)
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning (I use Keya)
1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper powder
1 sprig of Italian parsley (finely chopped)
1 large onion (finely chopped)
1/4 teaspoon red chilly flakes
1/4 teaspoon white flour
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
4-5 button mushrooms cleaned and sliced into half centimetre thick pieces (optional, but highly recommended)
Salt to taste
2 tablespoon of any flavourless cooking oil
1/2 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon good quality olive oil and a few drops more for garnishing


Preparation:

First, prepare the meatballs. Heat one teaspoon olive oil in a deep pan and cook the onion on low flame. As soon as they are caramelised a little, remove them from the pan and keep aside. Don't wash the pan as you will need it soon.

Dip the white bread in 3-4 tablespoon of milk and let it rest until soft. Combine the minced chicken, half of the cooked onions, Italian seasoning, pepper powder, salt, white bread and 1 egg and mix with hands.

Heat oil in the same pan that you have cooked the onion in. Clean your hands and keep a small bowl of water handy. Dip your fingers in it from time to time to moisten them; this way the meat will not stick to your fingers while making the meatballs. The meatballs should be of small size (bite-size, that is you can have one in a single bite) so that there are lots of them and they cook evenly. Shallow fry them in the oil, keeping in mind they don't have to be cooked on all sides. 3-4 minutes on both sides on low flame will do that will make them nice and caramelised. Don't overcook the meatballs as that will make them dry and chewy.

Now, remove them with a slotted spoon or a pair of tongs. Add the mushrooms to the remaining oil and sweat it for about a minute before adding the rest of the cooked onions. Now add the chicken stock and half a teaspoon of salt. Bring it to boil. Add the spaghetti and let it simmer on a gentle heat for 10 to 12 minutes or until the spaghetti is cooked. Remember, pasta of any kind is always cooked al dente which literally means 'to the tooth.' It basically means the pasta should be ever so slightly undercooked because the remaining cooking process will soften it further.

The liquid in the pan should reduce a lot and if not, bring it to boil for a couple of minutes until there is about a 1/2 cup of liquid left in the pan along with the pasta. Add the remaining milk. Now sprinkle the flour all over the surface. Add the butter, meatballs, salt, chilly flakes, chopped parsley and half of the grated cheese. Check the seasoning and if needed, add more salt. Switch off the gas when everything is well-combined. Portion them into two serving bowls (preferably ceramic)  and garnish with a few drops of olive oil and grated parmesan.

Serve piping hot with a drink on the side (fresh lime soda or white wine) and watch your date/spouse's jaw drop to the floor ;)

Basic Chicken Stock

Hey friends,

I use chicken stock in many recipes. It enhances the flavour and richness of any dish and the best thing about chicken stock is that you can prepare it with ingredients that tend to end up in your trashcan. It's inexpensive to make and you can prepare a lot at a time and preserve it for fifteen to twenty days in your refrigerator easily in an air-tight container. You can even make frozen cubes of chicken stock and store them in the freezer for months in a ziplock bag and use them in any gravy items or to rustle up a delicious soup in no time.

Now, many people add bay-leaves, flat-leaf parsley, coriander roots, ginger or lemongrass and many other flavouring agents to their chicken stock, but I don't. I believe, as far as the basic chicken stock is concerned, less is more. As you will notice, I don't use any flavour enhancer or even seasoning to it, but just a couple of ingredients that will neutralise the smell of raw chicken. That way you don't have to worry about the salt-content or flavouring when you are using it in any of your recipes and you can use it for any preparation, be it Continental or Chinese or Mughlai without having to worry about it changing the original flavour of the dish.

I had once prepared chicken sweet-corn soup using Maggi chicken stock cubes and I forgot they already have salt. Of course, I hadn't checked the instructions on the packet and I added salt resulting in an inedible soup which was way too salty.

Therefore, I don't add any seasoning to my basic chicken stock so that mistakes like this won't happen and it will take the flavour or any dish that I am preparing without overpowering them.

Now, about what parts of the chicken you should use for chicken stock - whenever I buy one whole chicken, I request my butcher to make it boneless and to give me the bones separately so that they don't go to waste. There is no problem if you make the stock with the whole chicken or chicken with bones and use the boiled meat for preparing something else (like a chicken sandwich or chicken bharta or olivier salad). Remember, there must be a lot of bones and the meat portion doesn't really do much for the chicken stock. It's the marrow that seeps out of the bones that makes a rich and flavourful chicken stock. Also, I forgot to mention before, don't use the chicken fat as it will make your stock disgustingly oily.

Ingredients:

Chicken bones (at least 300 to 500 grams)
1/2 litre water
4-5 whole black peppercorns
1/2 onion (don't bother to chop it, but I peel it to ensure it's nice and clean)
2 heads of carrot (discarded parts which are not used in cooking)

Preparation:

Clean the chicken bones and carrot heads thoroughly. I let the bones sit in water (not brine, but plain, cold water) for at least fifteen minutes and rinse them twice or thrice under running water so that there is no clotted blood or impurities stuck to the bones.

Place all the ingredients in a pressure cooker and bring it to boil. Cook it until seven to eight whistles (depending on your cooker, but at least you don't have to worry about overcooking the stock as the more the bones are boiled in the liquid the better) and let it cool completely before opening the lid.

If you don't have a pressure cooker, you can easily make it in a deep casserole/sauce pot/pasta cooker or anything with a fitted lid. Of course, in that case, you have to boil it for around 45 minutes (at least) on low flame, and you may need to add half a cup water because of the longer cooking time.

Strain the liquid with a fine mesh and voilà, your chicken stock is ready.



P.S. - I am sorry that I don't have an image as of now, but I will upload it soon.