Made from Scratch

I love alio olio, the smell of extra virgin olive oil and garlic made me salivate. There are more to it that made it tasty, the ground black pepper, sea salt, herbs and chilli. I will normally add small slices of bacon to enhance the taste.

Instead of having it plain, I will add sausages, seafood, baked cherry tomatoes with herbs, or over baked crispy bacon slices. But this time round I want to try making meatballs, from scratch.

Visiting the wet market is one of my favourite activities over the weekend. You will see my husband standing at a less crowded corner waiting, wishing I will end his misery soon. I bought minced pork, spring onions and chestnuts, and if I had planned my week well, I may buy more, but the thing is it’s a spur of the moment that I wanted to make meatballs so that’s it.

I further blended the minced pork in a blender with salt, pepper, rice wine, sesame oil, and soy sauce, till it became a sticky paste. Poured it into a big bowl and mixed in chopped spring onion, and diced chestnut (this gives the meatball the crunchy texture). Shaped it into small round balls and steamed them. It’s cooked, but not done. I refrigerated some for future use and pan-fried eight meatballs till nicely browned before topping them on top of the alio olio penne.

The outside is a little crispy due to pan-frying, and the inside is juicy and crunchy. I did not really measure the amount of ingredients I used, they are through gut feeling. It should more or less be like this:

200 grams	minced pork
½ teaspoon	salt
1 teaspoon	pepper
1 teaspoon	rice wine
A dash of sesame oil
1 teaspoon	soy sauce
2 stalks	spring onions
2 chestnuts

Have fun!