Borlotti Bean Balls
Song suggestions:
Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard - Paul Simon
The Shore - Jeremy Loops feat Motheo Moleko
Ingredients:
Bean balls
1 tin borlotti beans
30g breadcrumbs
1 large onion
1 tbsp butter
100g mushrooms
Pinch of salt and pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 flax egg
Gravy
1 tsp marmite
1/2 veg stock cube
2 tbsp butter
200ml boiling water
75ml milk
1.5 tbsp flour
Recipe:
*pre-step* - if you’re making mash to serve this with, I would peel potatoes here and start boiling them so you’re not doing everything at the same time once the balls are ready to fry.
Make the flax egg and set aside for 10 minutes until thick (1 tbsp ground flaxseed, 2.5 tbsp water).
Rinse the borlotti beans clean under cold water. Transfer into a mixing bowl and roughly mash, leaving some beans intact (you’re not aiming for a paste-like texture). Mix in the breadcrumbs.
Chop and finely dice the onion and mushrooms. Add to a pan with the butter and seasonings (salt, pepper and nutmeg) - sautée until soft and add to the bean mix. Combine until a mix forms.
Roll into little balls - you can either refrigerate them until needed or you can fry them straight away. Fry in a pan brushed with your oil of choice until the outsides are golden brown. It may be helpful to do this in a few batches.
To make the gravy (I make it in the same pan I used for the potatoes once I’ve taken them out), add all the liquids into a pan and heat on a medium heat until the butter is melted, whisking often. Turn the heat down, add the flour and whisk constantly to ensure all the flour dissolves and doesn’t form any clumps. Keep whisking until the gravy thickens to your desired consistency.
Serve with cranberry/lingonberry sauce and chopped parsley!
A Bite Out of Life
When I went to visit my Grandma this Easter, she was looking a little worse for wear… She’s struggling to eat for various reasons, she’s gone off a lot of food textures and flavours, and it hits her rather hard because she used to really enjoy the variety of the things she could cook for herself. The day I arrived, she was eating 1.5 Weetabix biscuits and a tiny bit of milk for breakfast, a small lunch and some soup for dinner; I knew I needed to help because she simply wasn’t getting enough nutrients or calories, but this wasn’t a nutrition issue, this was psychological. I found the best way to get her to eat more was to offer her things and with absolutely no pressure just let her eat what she could. No ‘one more bite’, ‘you have to eat this, you’re ill’, and explaining to her ways in which she could up her calories when I’d no longer be there. We started on day 1 by increasing her calories by keeping the Weetabix the same, but adding a spoonful of sugar to her breakfast. In a couple days, we upped the biscuits to two biscuits with the same sugar, then two biscuits with two spoonfuls of sugar and a little more milk, and by the end of the week we had her eating all that and half a kiwi on the side. It was one of the proudest moments of my life (and I’ve published a book, but this was unmatched). When I spent 8 months caring for her last year, I found she really liked popcorn. Kernels don’t really go off, and I found some in the back of her pantry whilst I was there and thought it might be a good way to get her eating more… I forgot how much popcorn grew in size afterwards so I slightly overdid it, but I thought I’d give her the whole bowl and see how she gets on; again: no pressure. The look on her face when I bought it into the living room was priceless - I left her to it and I came back… she had eaten the whole thing. All of it. Almost every single piece of popcorn: gone. It was easy to digest and so she didn’t get a stomach ache afterwards and I was left feeling on top of the world. I hoovered her up (sugar had gone all over her dress in the excitement) and I’m waiting for the day I can go back and make her some more popcorn again…
