Meatballs in Clay-Pot

I wanted to make meatballs today and use my new clay-pot. It turned out to be really delicious dish.

Ingredients

For the Meatballs

• 300 gr ground beef
• Salt, black pepper, cumin
• 1/2 small onion,chopped in little pieces
• Bread crumbs

For the Meal

• 3 medium potatoes
• 3 sweet green peppers
• 1/2 small onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Cherry tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 dessertspoon butter or ghee
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil

Preparation

To prepare meatballs mix all the ingredients in a large bowl and knead them until you can make little balls out of them. 

Cut potatoes in cubes and put them on the bottom of clay-pot after pouring the sunflower oil on the surface.

Put meatballs on top of  potatoes. Then add onions, tomatoes and green peppers. Bake this in 400F oven for 30 minutes.

Put the tomato paste in a small bowl, add 2 cups of warm water and minced garlic. Add this mixture to the clay-pot after taking it from the oven.

Spread the butter on top an put it back to the oven and bake it like 20 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.

Then add some grated mozzarella and bake another 2 minutes until it melts. I like it crispy, so I baked like 5 minutes after putting the cheese on top.

Date Snack

I bought some roasted chickpeas, I ate some of them and the rest has been on the shelf for couple of months. Then I realized I needed to find some other way to eat them and decided to mix them with dates. The good part of this recipe is you don't necessarily need chickpeas or dates, you can use any kind of nuts and dried fruit such as prunes, apricots or figs.

Ingredients

• 10 dates
• 100gr roasted chickpeas
• 1 tablespoon tahini
• 1 oz raisins
• Any kind of nut-I used couple of hazelnuts, some almonds and 3-4 walnuts

Preparation

Take out the seeds of the dates and put them in the water around one hour. I did not have food processor so I crushed the chickpeas and nuts in a mortar and pestle. I chopped the dates and raisins on the cutting board and mixed them all. If you want to use food processor, put tahini first add some water, when it got mixed add dates ad raisins and grind them together. Lastly add nuts and chickpeas and grind them altogether. Take out from the processor and put it on a parchment paper, cover up with stretch film and make it square with the help of a rolling pin. Bake it around 8 hours in the lowest heat like 150F until it gets dry. I only baked for 4 hours, it is still good.If you don't wan to bake it, just keep it in the fridge.

Carrot Cupcake

Note: This recipe is for 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the Cake

• 1 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 1/3 cups of confectioners sugar
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1/3 cup of sunflower/vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 dessertspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups of grated carrots
• 2/3 cup of crushed walnuts

For the Frosting

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 6 oz unsalted butter
• 2/3 lb confectioners sugar 

Take a large bowl, add all the sugar, oil,vanilla and eggs and beat. In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Add dry mixture to the wet one and beat again until it all get mixed. Lastly add walnuts and carrots and knead.

Pour the mixture in a cupcake baking pan and bake it in 400F preheated oven 10 minutes and then drop the temperature 350F and bake another 20-30 minutes. Stick a toothpick into the cake, if it is clean then it is baked, if it is not clean bake it another 10 minutes and try again.

In the meantime to prepare frosting beat butter and cream cheese and add confectioners sugar and beat again.
Take the cupcakes from the oven, let them cool down. Then put the frosting with the help of a plastic bag or a spoon.
Enjoy!