girl's night in

on the last day of our commontest2, two of my girlfriends and i decided to cook ourselves a dinner using nigella lawson and jamie oliver recipes. bea did the molten babycakes by nigella lawson and i did the meatballs by jamie oliver.

JAMIE O'S MEATBALLS WITH TOMATO SAUCE [DONE BY ME]

first, the dubious task of thawing the meat - it was kept in the freezer for about a week so beat chopped it up into hunks to speed up the thawing process. this is organic minced beef, but any other kind of minced meat would be fine depending on your preferrence.




finally when it was thawed, i put it into a big bowl to work with and season. unfortunately didn't take photos of the seasoning but i had to add bread crumbs, rosemary, basil - plenty of herbs. check out jamie olivers The Naked Chef cookbook for more details. i know these pictures look just gruesome. partly because my photography skills aren't that great and also, it's hard to make raw food look appetizing with a 2.0 meg digital.you can leave this to sit in the fridge for a few hours or you can work with it straight.

i let it sit so i could make the tomato sauce. i used jamie's recipe and it's pretty simple but there's chockloads of garlic in it - perhaps a little too much for me. i used ready canned tomatoes but if you're extra diligent you could squash your own.




okay here's the fun part. making the meatballs! if you like them perfectly round, keep your hands wet as you roll. if you don't mind them being a little bumpy [like me] then just work with what you have.





then fry them in a pan of olive oil [as much or little as you like] and quickly transfer them to your casserole dish. you don't want them to be cooked all the way through because you're baking them again after. you just want a nice brown. i admit mine are slightly overcooked.


pour the tomato sauce over the meatballs and sprinkle grated parmesan cheese among the meatballs. finally, put large slabs of mozarella on top and basil. the fresh leaves are best but i had to make do with the dried kind. you should be able to get these at any supermarket. all ready to bake!






i baked it for about 20 minutes at 180C - i think. when it's done, poke around a bit to check if the meatballs are cooked. it gives you an excuse to eat it first. SO, this is how it turned out. we ate it with some boiled packet pasta upon bea's adamant requests and i also bought two long baguettes to make meatball sandwiches with. and i suppose if you're like my brothers and can't live without your rice, you can have it with rice.

NIGELLA'S MOLTEN BABYCAKES [DONE BY BEA]

i actually tried this recipe out three years back and failed because i left the cakes in the oven for too long but bea did it this time and it turned out just perfectly. the recipe is taken from How To Be a Domestic Goddess.

bea used my rubber heartshaped moulds so the cakes could be squeezed out quickly. i can't tell you much about the process because we were working simultaneously [she did the batter while i cooked, and we baked it after we had the meatballs] but this is how the batter was




and this is how it was after it was baked for less than 10 minutes and served up with ben and jerry's vanilla ice cream.



SIMPLY GORGEOUS!