Italian bean-ball pasta lunch

That’s the follow-up of the previous post about the bean ball. Add pasta and salad and that makes a delicious Summer lunch.

Home-made matcha (green tea) pasta.

Creamy cheezy pesto dressing.
That’s made with the leftover of this :

The filling of the balls : sakekasu (sake lees), tofu, salt, olive oil. I’ve added more olive oil, lots of basil, a little garlic, a little vinegar and some water.

That makes a perfect dressing for a mix of baby leaves.

bean ball recipe

Meatballs or not…

So that’s this month’s Daring Cook’s challenge.

The June Daring Cooks’ challenge sure kept us rolling – meatballs, that is! Shelley from C Mom Cook and Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to try meatballs from around the world and to create our own meatball meal celebrating a culture or cuisine of our own choice.

Meatballs !

There will be several posts that will appear in the next days on this topic with Japanese chicken meat balls (tsukune) :
yakitori

So let’s start with this “Italian” version.

Yes, no meat in sight… and well bean versions are allowed.

Taisho kintoki red beans (boiled), garlic, onion, black miso, herbs (oregano and basil), paprika, hot chili and a little potato starch for the binding.

Chinese black miso is the main flavoring.

The cheezy filling is sakekasu (sake lees), tofu, olive oil and salt.

Then they can be steamed in a steamer or in a micro-wave (200 watts). Served in tomato sauce. They are equally good hot and cold.

the whole meal (click here)

Lacquered yakitori balls and grilled kabocha

Sauce tsukune.

Sesame tsukune.
Two more variation of tsukune (meat balls) of yakitori (grilled chicken skewer bars). For simple “salt” version, see here.

Yep, they are painted…

The boiled balls (preparation here) are put on skewers, then painted several times with sauce, before, during and after being grilled under the broiler or on a brasero. I have not made my sauce, I’ve used the fruity Bulldog sauce (more here). Some yakitori shops use that, but most make their mix.
For the sesame ones, after 2 or 3 times, I stopped adding sauce but passed the skewer in a mix of white and black sesame seeds.

As I used the oven-toaster, I also grilled thin slices of kabocha pumpkin. Just like that, no salt, no oil. It’s delicious.

Vegetables (raw red onion, blanched and cooled okra and ninniku-no-me garlic stalks) and the leftover of creamy pesto dressing (preparation here). I mixed and let one hour.

Then 2 appetizers, I kept them “nature” without adding salt :

The seeds of kabocha, baked with the rest.

Edamame.

So I had a small casual dinner… well, that was a lunch.

other yakitori

Summer veggie tagine with merguez-keftas

Hot like hell ? Let’s escape. I’ve boarded the flying tagine for a culinary trip to couscous world.

Lots of veggies and grilled kefta-merguez.

Merguez are suppose to be sausages, the name implies the shape of ahem… Well I didn’t bother casing them.

I just prepared ground beef spiced like merguez filling. I made a random spice mix. There is garlic, a good dose of chili pepper and an insane amount of red paprika.