Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Hearty Healthy Meatball and Mash

Monday night's dinner was a hit!  It was an experiment, took some improvising, and approaches were changed along the way.  The final product was delicious, filling, and (my favorite) healthy.  This dinner was so good, in fact, that Chuck, who never eats the same thing two nights in a row and doesn't like leftovers, had it again last night for dinner and couldn't stop complimenting it.

The idea behind it was to have something hearty, filling, but not heavy.  He nailed it.  His favorite part was the light and airy-ness.  I'm going to break it down into the three separate components: turkey meat balls, portobello red wine sauce, and mashed cauliflower.



Turkey Meatballs

Ingredients:

     20 oz.           Ground turkey (93/7)
     2                    Eggs
     3 slices         White bread, crust removed
     1/2 c.            Panko Bread crumbs
     1 t                  Orange zest
     1 T                 Orange juice
     1 t                  Dried thyme
     1 t                  Dried minced onion
     8-10 leaves  Sage, chopped
     1/2 c.            2% milk
                           Kosher salt
                           Fresh cracked pepper
                           Olive oil 




Directions:
  
     1:     Place the turkey in a mixing bowl.  Add 1 T Kosher salt, 1 t fresh cracked pepper, 
                        drizzle of olive oil, eggs, orange zest and juice, thyme, minced onion, and sage.  
                        Lay the pieces or bread across the top the of the ingredients and pour the milk 
                        over the bread.  Gently fold all of the ingredients together until they are 
                        combined.  Add the bread crumbs.  Tip from Chuck:  General rule of thumb is 
                        one egg per pound of meat, he increased to two eggs because of the extra 4 oz 
                        of meat we were using.  Had planned on only using two slices of bread and no 
                        bread crumbs but the turkey was so moist it would hold its shape.  The extra 
                        egg did create a much lighter meatball but you can experiment with one egg 
                        and less bread/breadcrumbs.  Just don't over handle your meat or it will get 
                        tough.


     2:     Form into 2" meatballs.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  
     3:     Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large pan over medium heat.  Add a single layer of 
                        meatballs and brown each side.  Once all of the sides are brown, place them on 
                        a baking sheet lined with non-stick foil and place into the oven, preheated to 
                        300 degrees F. Don't throw our your drippings, save them for the sauce! Tip 
                        from Chuck: You might need to brown the meatballs in two batches, we did.

 
     4:     Remove meatballs from the oven when their internal temperature reaches 165 
                       degrees F.




Red Wine Portobello Sauce

Ingredients:

     2 T        Flour
     2 T        Butter
     1 T        Olive Oil 
     1            Shallot, minced
     8 oz      Baby Bella mushrooms, sliced
     1/4 c.   Red wine (we used Ruffino Chianti)
     2 c.       Beef broth
     1 T        Sage, chopped

Directions:

     1:     After the meatballs have been removed from the pan, add the butter and olive oil to 
                      the pan. Tip from Chuck:  The olive oil will prevent the butter from burning.  
                      Stir in the flour.


     2:     Add the shallot to allow to soften as the flour cooks out of the roux.  Once this cooks 
                      for a few minutes, add the mushrooms.  Tip from Chuck:  Initially it will look 
                      like it's really drying the sauce out but as the mushrooms cook, they will add 
                      plenty of moisture to the mix.






     3:     After the mushrooms have cooked for a couple of minutes, add the wine to deglaze 
                      the pan and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes.


     4:     Add the beef broth , simmer for a few more minutes and then stir in the sage.






Mashed Cauliflower

Ingredients:

     5 c.        Cauliflower, cut into bite sized florets
     1 c.        Beef broth
     1 c.        Water
     1 T         Kosher salt
     1 t          Pepper
     1 T         Chives, chopped
     1 T         Butter
     2 T        Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

Directions:

     1:     Add the first 5 ingredients to a Dutch oven, cover and heat over medium heat until 
                      florets are very tender.


     2:     Tip from Chuck:  Here's where is got a little tricky.  Chuck used an immersion 
                      blender to mash the cauliflower but found it to be far too soupy and ended up 
                      using a strainer to thicken it up.  Might want to drain the caluliflower and then 
                      mash with a potato masher instead.


     3:    Stir in butter, Parmesan, and chives and you're ready to serve. (If it was thicker, we 
                      were also going to add a dallop of plain Greek Yogurt.)  
 



While we were eating, Chuck said he was curious on the nutritional content of this.  Because he would normally use pork and veal instead of the turkey, add more butter to just about everything, and potatoes instead of cauliflower, he wanted to know what kind of a difference he was really making.  I took on the challenge and looked up all of the items to put together an estimate.  Here's what I found:

                                           Calories                   Fat (g)                   Protein (g)               Carbs (g)

Meatballs (batch)                  1198                      26                         150                           64
                 (each)                       86                        1.9                        10.7                          4.6

Red Wine Sauce (batch)         515                      35.6                      15.8                          26.4

Cauliflower (batch)                267                      14.3                       13.8                         16.7

Pretty amazing, huh?  We each had 3 meatballs and 1/4 of the sauce and cauliflower.  Pretty darn good!

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