Here’s a really quick and tasty meatball dish. The meatballs are baked, with cherry tomatoes which makes a simple sauce. You can also customise the meatballs by adding chili, cheese or more sauce. They’re great served on crusty bread as mini burgers too!
The meatballs are very herby, cooked with rosemary and sage, and served with more rosemary, thyme and parsley. Hence the name – my homage to the Simon and Garfunkel version of “Scarborough Fair”, a favourite song of mine. I love the live version on the album Live 69 http://www.simonandgarfunkel.com/music/live-1969/.
Ingredients
1 onion
500g good quality minced beef (I used wagyu beef mince – wonderful flavour)
1/2 tsp rosemary sprigs
1/2 tsp sage leaves
1 egg, beaten
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2-3 tbls breadcrumbs or a good couple of handfuls
12 cherry tomatoes
6-8 truss cherry tomatoes
1/2 tsp chopped thyme leaves
1/2 tsp torn parsley leaves
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C non fan forced, 210 degrees C fan forced.
Chop the onion finely, or blitz in a food processor.
Put the beef mince in a large mixing bowl, breaking up the mince with a spoon. You could do all the mixing using your hands if you wish. Add the chopped onion, rosemary sprigs and sage leaves, which have been finely chopped.
Add the beaten egg, Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. Add the breadcrumbs, mixing to combine so that the mixture holds together. You will need to use your judgement about how much of the breadcrumbs you add to give you a good consistency to make meatballs.
Roll the mixture into golf ball sized balls. Place them side by side, fairly snugly, into a baking dish. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and push them as many halves as you like into the spaces between the meatballs. Scatter some more rosemary springs over the top with more salt and pepper.
Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes until the meatballs are brown and cooked, but still nice and moist in the middle, if you cut one open.
You could serve as is, but it’s nice to add some more cherry tomatoes. Blister some truss cherry tomatoes in a hot frying pan by dry-frying for a couple of minutes.
Serve the meatballs with the blistered tomatoes, scattered with thyme and parsley.
The Quirk and the Cool 