Lamb Meatballs With Roasted Pepper Sauce And Chickpeas

If you check out my blog list, you'll see that I follow several food blogs. Every now and then I see something on someone else's blog that I want to try. Such was the case tonight for dinner. Thanks to Claudia of cookeatFRET for this recipe: Nancy Silverton's lamb meatballs with piquillo peppers and chickpea sauce. I wasn't able to find any ground lamb at either Harris Teeter or Food Lion, so I bought a 2-pound package of lamb shoulder chops for $3.99/pound.

I cut the bones out but left a good amount of fat in with the meat. And yes, of course I froze the bones to make lamb stock later on.

I ran the meat through my grinder. Here's the lamb on its third grind-through.

My ingredients for the meatballs: 2 eggs bunch of parsley salt bunch of thyme smoked paprika 6 cloves garlic Nicely minced parsley, thyme, and garlic with eggs, salt, and smoky paprika ready to be added to the lamb.

Beaten eggs go into the lamb.

Minced garlic.

Parsley.

Thyme.

2 teaspoons smoked paprika and 3 teaspoons salt.

I hand-mixed the lamb mixture then formed 16 meatballs.

The recipe called for roasted piquillo peppers. Piquillo peppers are a product of Spain and the name means "little beak." I was unable to find piquillo peppers, roasted or non-roasted, but I did find these vine sweet mini peppers from Mexico and decided to use them.

And I roasted them over an open flame.

I thoroughly roasted the peppers until they were blackened. Dang, looks like I need to clean my stove top ... again.

The usual method for roasting peppers calls for placing the charred peppers in a paper bag and sealing it so that the steam helps peel the peppers. I used to do that until I read about Julia Child's method. She would plunge the hot peppers in an ice water bath. And it's efficient and quicker than the paper bag method.

And here are my roasted, peeled, rinsed peppers.

The ingredients for the roasted pepper sauce: roasted peppers Greek yogurt chicken stock

I processed the peppers, then added chicken stock.

I added a couple of glops of yogurt and processed again. This is a delicious sauce.

Then I sauteed my meatballs in a combination of butter and olive oil.

I lined 'em up and browned the edges.

After browning, I set the meatballs on a platter and poured out the grease in the pan.

I added a little butter back in the pan and tossed in my meatballs.

A little shimmy shake in the pan.

I added the rest of the chicken stock. I added this picture of the chick peas just because I liked the picture.

Previously, I had cooked these nice plump garbanzo beans. First, I rinsed them, then put them in salted water, brought it to a boil, turned off the heat, covered the pan, and let sit for an hour. Then I rinsed them again, put them back in the pan, brought the water to a boil, and simmered for maybe 45 minutes until they were done. I don't like my beans squishy. I want them to have a bit of a bite.

Action shot!

I added in some of the roasted pepper sauce and cooked a bit longer, allowing everything to soak up the flavor of the red pepper sauce.

And here's the plated dish: Lamb meatballs with roasted piquillo and chickpea sauce with little blops of Greek yogurt AND my creme fraiche, all sprinkled with parsley.

Truly, this dish hit the spot. The meatballs were very flavorful. The roasted pepper sauce was sweet, roasty, and peppery and gave a nice finish to the lamb and chickpeas. The yogurt and creme fraiche added a nice cool, tart accent. And parsley is always welcome on my plate. All in all, a nice hearty meal.