primal cavewife

Showing posts with label finger foods. Show all posts

Cheese and Mushroom Meatballs

The other night I made three different types of meatballs for dinner - Vegetable Meatballs, Sultana Meatballs and Cheese and Mushroom Meatballs.

Last time I made these, I grated the cheese and mixed it in with all the other ingredients. The cheese ended up melting off the meatballs when they were cooked which was rather disappointing. So this time, instead of mixing it in with the ingredients, I chopped them in little cubes and put it in the centre of the meatballs so they would still be cheesy and in the meatballs rather than off them!

Ingredients:

500g mince

1 cup mushroom

3/4 cup herbs (I used stuff from my backyard - parsley, basil, chives and oregano)

1 egg

2/3 cup almond meal (I didn't use this but I would recommend it so that the mix would be less soggy and the meatballs would be more solid)

cheese, cubed

salt

pepper

Cut the mushroom up in smaller pieces and together with the herbs, put it through the food processor until they become tiny bits.
Mix them in with the mince, egg, almond meal and salt and pepper.
Take a little portion, press a little dent in the middle and place the cubed cheese in it and roll the meat mix around it to form a ball.
Bake the meatballs at 180C for 15 minutes.

Vegetable Meatballs

The other night, I made a platter of trio meatballs for dinner! Mushroom and Cheese Meatballs, Sultana Meatballs and Vegetable Meatballs! They would make great finger foods at parties too if you are having one!

Ingredients:

500g mince

2 carrots, chopped

2 cups of greens (I picked all I had in my backyard - parsley, basil, oregano, chives, kale and spinach)

1 egg

salt

pepper

In a food processor, pulse the carrots and greens until they become tiny little bits.
Mix all the ingredients together and then form little balls with your hands.
Bake them in the oven at 180C for 15 minutes.

Kiwi Chips

We've been a little crazy with the dehydrator, dehydrating anything we can find. Kiwis are one of our latest victims! They are so delicious!

Ingredients:

2 kiwis

Peel the kiwis and slice them as thinly as possible.
Dry them on the dehydrator at 70C overnight or until they are brittle.

Vegetable Chips

The cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli have been taking over our vege patch with their massive leaves and one day my boyfriend said we should juice the leaves because apparently chlorophyll is really good for you. I was a bit skeptic about eating the leaves so I looked it up online and woah!!! I found out you can do all sorts of things with the leaves! You can juice them, cook them or even make chips out of them! I was so excited when I found out, I went home and plucked a couple leaves off each plant to make sure they don't go bare and started to make the first batch. Here I used kale, spinach, broccoli leaves, cauliflower leaves and cabbage leaves.

Ingredients:

broccoli leaves

cabbage leaves

cauliflower leaves

spinach

kale

coconut oil

salt

Pluck any stem out, wash the leaves and pat them dry.
Drizzle some oil and sprinkle the salt on top.
Mix the leaves together and place them in the dehydrator at 35C for about 5 hours or until they get brittle.

Sweet Potato Chips

There are many ways to make sweet potato chips. You can fry them in coconut oil, bake them in the oven or dehydrate them. Since we have recently acquired a dehydrator, I decided to dry my own sweet potato chips.

Warning: The jar was full to the brim at 9am. By 5pm, the jar was empty.

Ingredients:
1 medium sweet potato
coconut oil
salt

Slice the sweet potato as thinly as possible with a sharp knife. Soak them in cold water for an hour, changing the water after 30 minutes.
Dry the sweet potato and coat the slices lightly with coconut oil.
Place them on the racks in one layer and sprinkle salt over them.
Dehydrate for 12 hours at 70C, rotating the trays every couple hours to ensure that they dry evenly.

We did turn it down to 30C before we went to bed in case the chips burnt.

Sultana Meatballs

When I made the cheese and mushroom meatballs last weekend, I made these deliciously sweet meatballs as well. These sweet meatballs balance out the savoury meatballs quite well!

Ingredients:

600g mince beef/lamb

1 cup sultanas

1 cup almond meal

salt

pepper

Preheat oven to 200C.
Line baking tray with baking paper and set aside.
Mix all the ingredients together with a fork or your hands.
Roll the mix into balls and place them on the tray.
Bake in the oven at 200C for 25-30 minutes.

Sweet Potato Chips

We had bacon and eggs and sweet potato chips this weekend for breakfast. Whaaaat? Chips for breakfast? It's delicious! It's crunchy and healthy... made from sweet potatoes, spiced with cinnamon and cooked in coconut oil. YUM and it's super easy to make!

Ingredients:

2 tbsp coconut oil

1 small sweet potato

cinnamon powder

Slice the sweet potato really thinly. The thinner it is, the crispier they become when you fry them.
In a frying pan, heat up the coconut oil and place a layer of thinly sliced sweet potato.
Sprinkle the cinnamon powder over the sweet potato and flip them over once the bottom is golden brown. Once both sides have turned golden brown and let it set for a couple minutes before serving so they turn crispy.

Alternatively you could bake it in the oven. Just oil the sweet potato slices and sprinkle cinnamon powder over them and bake in the oven at 170 degree until they turn golden brown and then turn them over.

Sushi with Sweet Chilli Mayonnaise

Deciding what to pack for a surprise picnic can be quite difficult. You can’t bring the conventional stuff like sandwich or cheese and crackers (though we did bring some brie cheese because dairy is one of the few things we don’t cut out. In fact my boyfriend drinks at least 2 litres of milk a day to gain muscle weight – that and lifting of course. Just last week alone, we bought 32 litres of milk and none of it gone to waste). So ended up bring this paleo sushi, paleo cheesecake, avocado chocolate mousse to go with some strawberries, bananas and kiwi and some brie cheese.

Sushi
Ingredients:
canned crabmeat, drained
cucumber, sliced
capsicum, sliced
prawns, deveined, shelled and cooked
eggroll
avocado, sliced

Note: I haven’t actually perfected the eggroll yet, when I have, I will post a recipe on the blog. Make sure to drain the crabmeat, cook the prawns through and slice all the other ingredients up. Lay them on the seaweed sheet and roll it up. I didn’t drain the crabmeat very well so the seaweed got a little soggy but it was healthy and delicious! Go ahead and practice making your own sushi rolls for picnic this summer!

I would also recommend stuffing in pieces of chicken from your leftover roast. Since this was a seafood based sushi, I whipped up some sweet chilli mayo to go with it.

Sweet Chilli Mayonnaise
Ingredients:
2 tbsp mayo
a dollop of sweet chilli
a pinch of cayenne pepper

Mix the ingredients together and adjust according to your taste.

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