Modified: Jamie Oliver Meatballs

Easter's almost upon us, and I've been feeling the need to feel like a domestic goddie. In addition to a lunch for the mister (still a WIP), I wanted something cute and special for Pringlepaws (something along the lines of dog treats shaped like Easter eggs, and complete with icing), but he obviously can't eat chocolate... and what on earth is carob? Can totally imagine the fine folks at NTUC pointing me to the carrots if I should ask. In addition, the doggy recipes I've read tend to be painfully plain - these recipes constantly assume that the dog will consume EVERY MORSEL of their plain peanut butter/chicken stock/bacon recipes. Hello, not true. And they don't even look healthy.

So.. enter a modification of Jamie Oliver's meatballs! I've changed it a little to make it more dog friendly.. by removing the mustard. And YAY my brother (the food critic) said it was tasty! And he ate the doggy one > : )

Ingredients (should make 24 meatballs?)
4 sprigs fresh rosemary A handful of fresh Italian parsley
12 Jacob's cream crackers (Trusty old Khong Guan did the job for me..)
2 heaped teaspoons Dijon mustard turmeric (Cancer prevention anyone?)
500 g quality minced beef, higher-welfare pork, or a mixture of the two
1 heaped tablespoon dried oregano
1 heaped tablespoon dried rosemary
1 large free-range egg (oops no eggs at home - The egg is meant to bind the ingredients together.. Used a tbsp of Parmesan cheese and a tiny bit of honey instead)
sea salt - none for Pringles!
freshly ground black pepper

How To

1. Crush the crackers and chop the fresh parsley
2. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl using your hands
3. Pop it into the oven at 200 deg c, for about 15 minutes? Or until you hear sizzling (Jamie's recipe said to fry it using olive oil.. but I'm not a fan of washing up. So I baked!)
4. Got leftovers? I tossed in a pinch of Bacon Salt and the meatballs tasted even better! These will be for Pringles' humans ^^

Beyond Meatballs

Like I said.. I intended to bake him some Easter eggs, tastefully presented in a ferrero rocher tray......unfortunately, I followed a recipe by a doggy site for dog friendly yoghurt icing that hardens. And it obviously didn't work, and the icing went all over the place :( No more doggy recipes for me going forward.. haha.

The idea here was something like Moroccan Beef with Mint-Yoghurt icing. 

By the way, I visited LemonZest yesterday- it was their annual stock-take sale, and all manner of  colourful, functional cookware were on sale! With very shaky self-control, I made it out of the sale with 2 very reasonable silicon spatulas, and 3 even more reasonable baking trays/moulds... Yes I'm in denial mode here. I had to stop myself from getting the fruit-infuser bottle, potato masher... and a very well-made dog-bone baking tray, because my mom would probably flip. My colleague tried to convince me that by sectioning off one end of the bone, I could make it look phallic, and the dog-bone tray would have one more function.......sounded like a sure-fire way to get my mom to ban me from leaving the house...ever. They do have tons of doggy bakeware though - I saw many non-stick trays with bone molds, going at 50% off ($10?)! Oh and my colleagues left with their arms full too - I've signed up for their mailers, hopefully next year's sale will be as good :b LemonZest can be found at Chip Bee gardens (where all the Da Paolo restaurants are), or at Pasarbella.

LemonZest at Holland V (credits to their website for this photo)