More January joy: A Netherton meatball recipe for the New year
So much is written about New Year's resolutions, Veganuary, Dry January and the like. And so many of them involve giving up something, going without, just generally hard work.
We wrote about resolutions back at the start of the decade with an introduction that included the following:
"Nearly 4000 years ago Babylonians made promises to their gods at the start of each year that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts.
The Romans began each year by making promises to the god Janus, for whom the month of January is named.
In the medieval era, the knights took the "peacock vow" at the end of the Christmas season each year to re-affirm their commitment to chivalry."
We actually prefer to make positive resolutions, two of our personal favourites being to wear more lipstick which is a guaranteed way to make you smile more and climb more mountains, to enjoy the view from the summit. Obviously these are not everyone's thing, but you get the idea.
On the food front, we are going for sociable and sustainable. We are making meals for sharing, for sitting together and enjoying less meat, but better quality, bulking out with grains and lentils.
To make these meatballs we added 200g of cooked barley to 500g organic pork mince, with plenty of salt and pepper. Then browned them off in a little oil in an 11" chef's prospector pan.
The browned meatballs were lifted out and next we gently fried a sliced red onion with 2 cloves of garlic and a generous pinch of chilli flakes.
Then in went a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tin full of water, a big squidge of toamto purée, 3 teaspoons brown sugar, 30ml red wine vinegar and 2 tins of cannelinni beans. The tomatoey beans were joined in the pan by the meatballs and the whole lot simmered for 30 minutes.
This made enough for 6 hungry people.
