Quiche Lorraine aka Ham Pie

You need a pie tray for this one.

The base

• 100g Butter
• 1dl Grated Cheese
• 3dl Wheat Flour
• 4 tbsp Water

Mix the butter, cheese and flour. They should form a rough quite dry dough. Start adding water till you can get the a nice ball from this dough. Roll the dough into a thin base and spread it in the pie tray. You can fold the edges bit over the tray to make sure they dont sink while cooking. Poke holes with a fork to the base. Prebake the base at 200C in oven till it gets a bit of colour.

Filling

• 120g Ham
• 200g Grated Cheese
• Black Pepper
• 3 Eggs
• 3dl Milk or 1dl Cream or 2dl Unripened Cheese like Philadelphia
• 1 Bell Pepper

Spread the ham and the cheese on top of the prebaked base. Season with pepper. Mix the eggs and whatever filling you want. Pour this mix on the pie. Cut thin slices of the bell pepper and spread them over the pie. Bake the pie in the oven for 20 minutes at 200 degrees.

Meat balls with granny's recipe

One of my favourite dishes of all time has been my grandmother's meat balls. This is a variation of my own. And I hate it when meat balls like this and those rubber balls they sell at shops fall under the same category (="meat balls"). It's like day and night, really. Just read ahead.

The amounts of everything except minced meet and eggs are just approximations so feel free to vary them as you wish! Let me just say that the secret is the garlic.

Serves four

The meat balls
600 grams of minced meat (pork-beef)
4 cloves of garlic
2 eggs
1 dl white flour
fresh parsley
black pepper
white pepper
salt
chilli powder
nutmeg

The sauce
4 tbsp of butter
6 tbsp of white flour
5 dl water
1 meat stock cube
soy sauce
white pepper
black pepper
salt
a bit of spicy cumin

With the meat balls, chop the garlic and mix with the rest of the stuff in a bowl. The amounts of spices can vary to your liking. Whenever it's possible, use fresh herbs like parsley in this recipe. If you want the meat balls to be a little bit more easier to shape, add more flour. Then take a small amount of meat paste and rub it in between your hands. Try to form a small cute nest for the meat ball in your hands so it will end up being like a ball instead of tube.

At this point, I'd start making the sauce. Take a large sauce pan or a kettle and drop the butter there and start browning it. Add the flour and be sure to whisk all the time. When the flour gets a bit of colour, add the water. Add the meat stock cube and just spice it up to your liking! I found the spicy cumin giving an elegant addition to the taste.

After preparing the meat balls, fry them in a fry pan with butter. Yamm, grease! This is a surefire way to get better meat balls than baking them in the oven. Just be sure to fry the meat balls on every side and long enough so the core will get cooked as well.

After one set of meat balls is done, take them off and put them into the sauce. Just continue till all the meat balls are done and swimming in the sauce.

Serve with (mashed!) potatoes!

Meat Balls

This is my basic recipe for meat balls. I will be refering to this one later on alot. I personally like to cook quite alot of meat balls at once, so I can do several dishes out of them.

Meat Balls Ingredients:

• 400g Minced Meat
• 1/2 Onion
• 2x Garlic glove
• 0,7dl Water
• Breadcrumbs
• 1,5 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Pepper
• 2 tsp Mustard

Heat the oven to 200C. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Knead the dough a bit to make it smooth. Dont add all the water at once, but keep pouring in more as you mix it. The amount of breadcrumbs to use is up to you. Sometimes I dont use any, sometimes I put enough to get a bit thicker paste. The breadcrumbs help if you want to make really round and nicely shaped meat balls, but if you add too much the meatballs will taste like bread.

Bake the meat balls in the oven for about 15 minutes. You can check if the meatballs are ready by cutting one of them in half and if there is any redness, it isnt done yet.