I'm having a bit of a disastrous December, and not just because I have not yet started my Christmas shopping. Two bouts of sickness has meant, nearly two weeks into the month I have only cooked two 15 minute meals. My grand plan of cooking the remaining sixteen 15 minute meals is in serious jeopardy. It doesn't help that Lolz is now threatening to refuse to eat any more fish meals. Still, at least her stomach is now functioning as normal and she chose this chilli con carne/meatball combo as meal number 106, as we continued our gastronomic world tour, which has already taken us to Mexico, Greece and Morocco in the last couple of weeks...
It also hasn't escaped my attention that today is Friday the 13th, so I knew I would have to be on my guard. It looked safe though - there were no exotic ingredients which might be troublesome to find, no fiddly techniques, no flambéing, and no ingredients that should put Lolz in fear of food poisoning round 3.
In the carb department today we had bulgur wheat and the first job is to get that cooking with some preserved lemon and cinnamon to jazz it up a bit. Once that's in the pan, you start making the meatballs and although this is my fourth time of making meatballs in this challenge, I still haven't mastered the technique of forming the balls in a speedy fashion. And it's not just my meatballing technique which lets me down - there's a lot of stuff to chop which also takes some time. Eventually though they were all in the pan and the sauce gets made in the usual 15 minute meal style - by chucking everything in the liquidizer.
It wasn't one of my quickest, but eventually it was plated up. And it was mostly good - you can't go wrong with a good meatball and the sauce is aromatic without being too spicy (in fact I think a bit of chilli powder would not have gone amiss although Lolz would probably disagree). I love the popped kidney beans to. A good solid meal overall.
Lolz gave the dish 8/10. Difficulty rating 5/10.
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