Vegetarian Meat(less)balls
Ingredients
Meat(less)balls
- 360 g of lentils weight already cooked
- 75 g of almonds or other dried fruit
- 200 g brown rice or black rice or buckwheat weight already cooked
- A handful of spinach, parsley or coriander
- 1 egg
- Salt/Pepper
- Olive oil for frying or not if using the oven
- Nutritional Yeast or mushroom powder for flavour Optional
Carrot sauce
- 2 chopped onions
- 2 cloves of garlic crushed
- 50 ml of extra virgin olive oil
- 500 g carrot cut into small cubes
- 500 ml of sweet white wine muscat, white port, etc.
- Water or vegetable broth as much as needed for the desired sauce texture
- Salt
Instructions
Meat(less)balls
- Cook the pre-soaked legumes and rice, until they are very tender. Drain and reserve. You can also used canned lentils.
- Clean and chop the spinach or herbs.
- In a bowl mix all the previous ingredients with the egg almond flour and the seasoning
- If the mixture is too runny, add some breadcrumbs.
- If, on the other hand, the mixture is too dry and does not stick, add an additional egg yolk. Note: it helped for me to mash the mixture a bit with a fork, or squish it with my hands.
- Shape into balls the size of a walnut. Coat the bottom of a skillet with olive oil and fry the meatballs in batches until golden brown. Otherwise bake in the oven until they are a bit browned (around 10-15min)
Carrot Sauce
- Chop the onion, transfer it to a saucepan with the bottom covered in olive oil and sauté until transparent.
- Add the peeled and chopped garlic, give them a few turns.
- Add the chopped carrot, sweet white wine and water or broth. Cook it as necessary so that the carrots are tender (about 20 min)
- Blend with a mixer to obtain a more or less fine sauce. Correct seasoning and texture if needed.
- Combine the fried meatballs with the sauce in a saucepan and boil it all together over low heat for the last 10 minutes so that the balls take on the flavor, or simply serve the meatballs over the sauce.