{"id":1142,"date":"2013-01-01T21:13:15","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T21:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myfifteenminutemealsproject.co.uk\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2013-01-01T21:13:15","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T21:13:15","slug":"swedish-meatballs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myfifteenminutemealsproject.co.uk\/?p=1142","title":{"rendered":"Swedish Meatballs …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… Celeriac & Spinach Rice\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

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With Christmas now over I should be able to get back to cooking more 15 Minute Meals again.\u00a0 I had thought I\u2019d manage more than just one over the whole Christmas period.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve ended up being very busy.\u00a0 It\u2019s the first day of the new year and it seems like a good day to start cooking again.\u00a0 Cooking 15 Minute Meals that is, I have done a huge amount of other cooking over Christmas.\u00a0 I have noticed a bit of a change in how I cook, which I think is down to doing these meals.\u00a0 I noticed that I am now much more confortable cooking, two, three or four things at a time than I ever used to be.\u00a0 I am becoming a multitasker! I think I only had one incident where I burnt some sugar I was caramelizing because I was distracted by doing some other cooking at the same time.\u00a0 I also use the food processor for chopping, slicing and grating far more than I ever did.\u00a0 I am so used to using it while doing the 15 Minute Meals, that it has become very natural to use it. It has been nice to cook other things for a while and not to have to always slavishly follow a recipe.\u00a0 But I\u2019m excited to get back to doing these meals.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I bought the ingredients for this meal a couple f days ago while doing the food shop for new years eve.\u00a0 This recipe requires a swig of vodka.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really like vodka.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have any vodka and I don\u2019t buy it.\u00a0 I now needed to buy some. In the various supermarkets I visited I looked for a miniature bottle.\u00a0 I guess even a miniature has more than a swig in it.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t any.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t buy any vodka that day.\u00a0 That meant that today I was faced with all the ingredients of the meal bar one.\u00a0 My own self imposed rules mean that I have to use all the ingredients as specified unless I genuinely can\u2019t get one.\u00a0 I can get vodka.\u00a0 I can get it easily.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t want to spend money on buying a whole bottle.\u00a0 In the end I have no choice I have to buy a bottle.\u00a0 I now have a whole bottle of vodka less one swig and nothing to do with it!<\/span><\/p>\n

This meal requires you to remove the knobbly end of a celeriac, peel it and then dice it into 1 cm cubes.\u00a0 Removing the skin for a celeriac is a fiddly job at the best of times.\u00a0 Inconveniently they are often not very round and quite knobbly.\u00a0 Also cutting something this big and this shaped into 1 cm dice takes time.\u00a0 I have reasonable knife skills, but it still is not a quick process.\u00a0 It takes more than six minutes for me to do this and get the celeriac cooking.\u00a0 The next task is to start to cook the (product placement alert) Uncle Ben\u2019s 10 minute rice.\u00a0 You may have spotted a problem here.\u00a0 If you have to cook ten minute rice and you are already more than 6 minutes in you\u2019re in trouble! I don\u2019t really think I could have prepared the celeriac any quicker.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t even a particularly big one.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rest of the cooking process was quite smooth.\u00a0 But there was no real hope of making up the time.\u00a0 There is an exciting part where you set the vodka, which is poured over the meatballs, on fire.\u00a0 I no longer have a gas hob so I lit it with a lighter.\u00a0 My hand was briefly on fire, but it was fine! The meatballs have cranberry jam added to them.\u00a0 I had some cranberry sauce which I had made left over from my new years eve meal last night so it was put to use in this meal.\u00a0 I was more than three minutes over the fifteen minutes, and I don\u2019t really think I could have done this much quicker.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a nice meal.\u00a0 But I have mixed feelings about the ten minute rice.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t think it tastes as good as \u201cnormal\u201d rice.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t bad, but just not as good.\u00a0 In some of the other meals where this has been used, there have been some quite big flavours alongside the rice and so the rice is less noticeable.\u00a0 The flavours in this meal are quite subtle. The rice is a key part of the dish and I do think it would be better done with \u201cnormal\u201d rice.\u00a0 If I did this again, with out the rules associated with doing this as a project, I would cook \u201cnormal\u201d rice even if it meant that it took just that bit longer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way the photos for this post were taken with my new camera which was a Christmas present form my brother \u2013 thanks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who with:<\/strong> Gordy and Gavin\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How Long:<\/strong> Eighteen minutes and twenty one seconds\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t