Tag Archives: starters

Italian Meatball Skewers

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Winter has rolled in uninvited.  Unfortunately it hit on my husband’s birthday so he wasn’t overly impressed to be snow blowing that day.  Something tells me it’s going to be a rough winter but hopefully I’m proved wrong.  Normally I hate being wrong but I’d love to be in this case.  Fortunately the storm was through and done before we had our annual potluck game night to celebrate his birthday.  Though I have to say, we have hearty friends, they would have come anyway. You can’t stop fun! Because it was game night, finger food was a must so I made Italian Meatball Skewers.  Tasty and easy to eat.

This is also super easy to make!

Technique for Italian Meatball Skewers:

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C.

The key for this dish is to use fresh ingredients.

In a mixing bowl add all the ingredients and combine them with your hands.  It’s always a weird feeling but it’s the best way to get everything incorporated without overworking the meat.

Roll the mixture into 1in/2.5cm balls.  Place on a baking sheet and bake 10-15 minutes.  For the last few minutes put the oven on convection/fan to brown the outside.

Slice the grape tomatoes in half and layer the meatballs, tomatoes, cheese and basil onto the toothpicks.

Serve immediately.  And let the games begin!

 

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Italian Meatball Skewers

A flavourful party food.

Course Side Dish
Cuisine Italian
Keyword Italian Meatball Skewers
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Servings 8 people
Author Our Growing Paynes

Ingredients

Meatballs

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 2 small handful fresh oregano, finely chopped
  • 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan
  • 1 tsp coarse sea salt
  • 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Remaining ingredients

  • grape tomatoes, sliced in half
  • small mozzarella balls
  • fresh basil, torn into pieces

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400F/200C.

  2. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl with your hands.  Roll the mixture into balls 1in/2.5cm in diameter.  Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes.  In the last few minutes change the oven over to convection/fan to crisp up.

  3. Layer the meatballs, tomatoes, mozzarella and basil onto toothpicks.  Serve immediately.  

Stuffed Cucumbers and If It Looks Like a Duck and Walks Like a Duck…

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I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination but there are times when the military or government are so blatant it beggars belief.  About 2pm on Wednesday afternoon there was a massive boom that shook all the homes over several towns and it lasted just a second or so.  Because it snowed the night before a lot of us thought snow was falling off our roofs but as we only got an inch and most of it melted by then we were very quickly puzzled about what the hell just happened.  It felt like a truck hit the house.

So of course a lot of people were circling their homes and businesses looking for damage.  What was it?  A sonic boom.  Which is illegal over populated areas.  So the MA National Guard are saying it was just normal jet noise.  The only ones that seem to believe that are the people at the MA National Guard.  It isn’t the fact it was a sonic boom that bothers me, though given how it freaked out our dogs I’m ok without the booms, it’s the fact they are lying about it.  I mean, give over people.  Guinness was very needy for about 24 hours.  Murphy was just fine in his armchair of choice.

Fortunately this past Sunday was much quieter.  We got the family together to celebrate a few birthdays and we did a sort of tapas lunch.  Loads of flavours but not a ton of cooking required.  My mum loves peaches so we did up some peach bellinis which was fun and went down very easily!

I came across a recipe for cucumber feta rolls that looked interesting and I did a variation of those for Sunday.

I decided not to make them into rolls as it would be less messy and I wouldn’t have to worry about toothpicks making their way to the floor then into the dogs.  So I sliced the cucumber into 3/4″ or so slices then hollowed out the top.

Stuffed cucumber 4 2014

My husband found some locally made feta cheese that was quite nice.  Crumble about 4oz and add a few dollops of plain greek yoghurt.

Stuffed cucumber 1 2014 Stuffed cucumber 2 2014

Slice up a few pieces of sun dried tomatoes.  It’s on my list this summer to try to make some with the tomatoes from our garden.  Should be an interesting experiment!

Stuffed cucumber 3 2014

Mix with the cheese and yoghurt, add some chopped oregano and salt and pepper.  Squeeze a splash or so of lemon juice and stir it together.  My husband and son don’t like olives so instead of chopping the kalamata olives and mixing them in I just topped most of these with a slice of olive.

Stuffed cucumber 5 2014

Very easy to make for a dinner party or for a healthy snack.  And I do love the pairing of sun dried tomatoes and olives.