Lamb Meatballs with Cumin Rub

This recipe comes from Cuisine magazine and is basically perfect. Though it does allow for some playing with the spices for the rub and the method of serving. I like to have them on a plate with a yoghurt dipping sauce or in a wrap or pita bread with seasonal salad and greek yoghurt.

Serves 4

Meatballs:
800g lamb mince
2 cloves garlic, crushed with 1 tsp salt*
1 tsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 large egg

Mix all ingredients in a bowl (I like to put on some gloves and use my hands, so much easier). Form into oval  balls of about 45g each, cover and leave in the fridge to set for at least 1 hour.

Rub:
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp sea salt
To spice things up, add 1 tsp of paprika and/or 1 tsp of chilli powder

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Lightly roll meatballs through mix and gently massage into surface. Leave to sit at room temperature for 30 mins.

Cook on a pre-heated and oiled pan or BBQ plate until golden brown and just cooked through.

I like to serve with a yoghurt sauce which can be used for dipping or a filling for wraps or pitas. Simply mix together 1/2 cup greek yoghurt, 50g finely diced cucumber and 1 Tbsp mint sauce or finely chopped mint. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

* Crushing your own garlic is easy! Simply chop finely then cover with a decent pinch of salt and press onto chopping board with the flat of your knife until a paste forms. Doing this as the first prep for a meal will also get the garlic flavour to spread over all the veges you chop on your board.

Food = good

In biblical times, "breaking bread" was a term used literally; nobody had cutlery, let alone bread knives, and bread was literally torn apart to be shared. In antiquity, bread was considered so essential to the maintenance of human life that the sharing of it became an important and complex social act. Rituals formed and evolved as to who would be the first at a table to break bread, and about the sharing of bread with friends, strangers, or even enemies. In fact, this food staple, and the rituals surrounding it, were deemed so important that the bible contains no less than 600 references to bread and the koran no less than 80.

Today, breaking bread is generally used to describe the sharing of food in a comfortable, social situation and is often accompanied by wine and conversation; both of which vary greatly in quality. The sharing of a meal forms the central element of most social situations from casual dinners to holiday celebrations to mating rituals. Global trends are forever developing and reemerging in the world of food and it plays an enormous role in the economy and entertainment sectors. Like the modern social networks of today, food bridges culture, spanning the globe and bringing flavors, traditions and techniques from one country to another seamlessly. Not only is it essential for all human life, but food has become one of life's  greatest and most diverse sources of pleasure. The point I'm making here is that everyone, from the Good Lord to the Sith Lord, loves to eat. 

This new blog stems from my decision to cook at least one new thing every week in order to become an excellent cook alongside the fact that finding recipes online is a pain in the butt. Hundreds of websites offer hundreds of versions of a recipe, all of which are slightly different and in order to use them you must sift through and apply a basic understanding of kitchen chemistry to find one that may or may not turn out great. And cook books are expensive. I recently bought a Gordon Ramsay (god of the foods!) cook book just to find that most of the ingredients are not readily accessible to me and I have to modify most of the recipes anyway. So, my aim is to provide a few recipes that I have tested and adapted already for your convenience in the hope that I can take a little of the frustration out of cooking. After all, cooking should be more fun than frustrating.