Pork Mince - fourth batch

For the final batch of mince I made 12 meatballs, in a spicy tomato sauce.

An action shot of my balls a bubblin'

For the balls, in a bowl I combined the mince with a very finely chopped onion and a couple of garlic cloves which had been briefly fried. Added to this was salt and a generous amount of black and white pepper, a healthy shake of dried thyme, a pile of breadcrumbs from yesterday's stale crust, the grated zest and squeeze from a lemon and an egg. I wasn't sure whether the egg was actually required (some recipes use one, others don't), so I took a punt and annoyingly it seemed to make the mixture too wet. So I added in some more bread crumbs and thyme to try to dry it a bit.

I then rolled them in my hands into balls, tickled them in some flour and fried them in olive oil for about 10mins until they had some colour and kept their form. They were then placed to one side.

For the sauce, I began by frying a sliced red onion, 4 cloves of garlic, chunked up red and green peppers, and two finely cut up red chillies. After a few minutes two cans of chopped tomatoes were poured into the pan, along with a further half a can of water. The sauce was seasoned with salt, pepper and mixed herbs, and a splashing of Worcestershire sauce and little flourish of sugar.

I then reintroduced my balls to the pan, half submerging them in the bubbling sauce. I allowed them to bubble for 30mins, after which I threw in small tin of sweetcorn to the sauce, and put some linguine on to boil. Just before draining the pasta I added a few cubes of butter to the mixture to give it a gloss. Oooo get me.

My balls resting upon a nest of linguine covered in spicy tomato sauce

Verdict
The balls themselves were really tasty. As stated before, lots needs to be added to pork mince to make it taste of anything. The lemon and pepper in particular really came through. The sauce was fairly standard and nothing special, but the linguine made a nice change. 7.1 out of 10.