Chicken, spinach and cheese polpette
This is a really useful recipe. You can serve these little chicken meatballs with home-made tomato sauce (though leave out the cinnamon) and spaghetti, or with plain (unsauced) spaghetti moistened with olive oil, or in bowls of chicken broth (cook small pasta such as orzo, or long-grain rice, in the broth before adding the polpette). And of course you can just stuff them into wraps with lettuce, tomato and mayo, or serve them with some kind of dip. This mixture makes about 50 polpette and I reckon on serving each person eight if I serve them with pasta (they’re really not very big); more if I’m just serving them with a dip.
In principle I don’t agree with the idea of ‘childrens’ food’, but it’s hard to stick to that if you end up with a picky eater in the family. I am always looking for dishes that my nine-year-old will enjoy. And these get the thumbs up. Grown-ups (thankfully) like them just as much.
Ingrediënten
- 500 g 1lb 2oz minced chicken
- 50 g 1¾oz fresh white or brown breadcrumbs
- 20 g ¾oz grated Parmesan
- 60 g 2oz grated Gruyère
- 2 –3 tbsp olive oil
- ½ onion or 1 small onion, very finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves crushed
- 200 g 7oz spinach
- leaves from 3 sprigs of thyme
- generous grating of nutmeg
- finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
- salt and pepper
Instructies
- Put the minced chicken in a bowl with the breadcrumbs and the cheeses.
- Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a frying pan and sauté the onion over a medium to low heat until soft but not coloured.
- Add the garlic and cook for another two minutes.
- Leave to cool.
- Put the spinach in a pan with a couple of tbsp of water and cover.
- Set over a low heat and allow to wilt, turning the leaves over a couple of times.
- It will take about four minutes.
- Drain and leave to cool.
- Add the cooled onion to the chicken with the thyme, nutmeg, lemon zest and plenty of salt and pepper.
- Squeeze the excess water from the spinach and chop it finely.
- Add to the rest of the ingredients and mix everything with your hands.
- It’s really important that the mixture is well seasoned.
- Wet your hands – it makes it easier to shape the polpette – and form the mixture into little balls, about the size of a walnut in its shell.
- Put them on a tray or baking sheet as you prepare them.
- If you have time, cover them and chill – it helps them stay firmer – but I often just cook them straight off.
- Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan and cook the polpette in batches over a medium heat, so the outsides get a good colour, allowing each to form a crust before turning it over.
- You need to cook and turn the polpette until brown and crusty all over – about three minutes for each batch – then reduce the heat and continue to cook, again turning from time to time, until the polpette are cooked through, roughly another seven minutes (cut into one to check how they’re doing; there should be no trace of pink).
