Fragrant Pork Meatball and Rice One Pot

Not only do I have an obsession with purchasing cookbooks, but I have the same healthy obsession with purchasing cooking magazines. My new all time favourite being "BBC Australian Good Food" which never fails every month to be crammed full of great recipes. Of course July's issue is no different. After reading it several times, cover to cover, I have dog eared the pages containing recipes that I am definitely testing on my family.

The first recipe that caught my attention is this one, Fragrant Pork Meatball and Rice One-Pot. To give you an idea of how good I find this magazine the other recipes on my "to cook list" are Cajun-spiced Chicken with Beans, Glazed Meatloaf, Ross Dobson's Steak and Onion Casserole, Creamy Ham and Mushroom Bake, and Kylie Kwong's Braised Chicken Wings with Tamari, just to name a few.

The concept of this dish and making the meatballs could not be any easier. In fact I was impressed and somewhat surprise as it's a technique that I have never used before. The simple act of taking a sausage and squeezing the insides out to form small meatballs was terrific. This recipe called for pork sausages but I am sure any flavour sausage would work just as well.

Fragrant Pork Meatball and Rice One Pot was quick to prepare, easy to cook and went down a treat. The house was definitely fragrant during the dish being cooked and the taste was smooth yet full of flavour. I did make some minor changes, as usual for me. I didn't have thick pork sausages (4) that the recipe called for so I used thin Italian Style pork sausages and also added some carrot, capsicum and zucchini to the recipe to bulk it up and ensure that we were getting our intake of vegetable also. I don't think these changes or additions made any drastic change in the outcome of the dish. Next time however I will use a low fat style of sausage in an attempt to make this dish more weight loss friendly.

The main thing overall, the kids loved it and once again I can "cook it again"! Even though once again I am showing you a really bad photo of the dish.

Fragrant Pork Meatball and Rice One-Pot

(recipe adapted from BBC Australian Good Food)

Serves: 4

8 thin Italian pork sausages

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion, finely diced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 small carrot, finely diced

1/2 red capsicum, finely diced

1 zucchini, grated

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground coriander

3/4 cup long grain rice

3 1/2 cups salt reduced vegetable stock

1 x 400g can diced tomatoes

1/2 cup roughly chopped coriander

Cut one end off each sausage. Squeeze sausage meat from skins and roll into small balls.

Heat oil in a large saucepan over high heat. Cook meatballs, turning frequently, for 5 - 6 minutes or until browned and cooked through. Remove from pan.

Reduce heat to low and cook onion, garlic and carrot for 3 minutes or until softened. Add capsicum, zucchini, cumin and coriander, stirring for 1 minute, until fragrant. Stir in rice and cook for a further 1 minute.

Pour in stock and tomatoes. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until rice is tender. Return cooked meatballs to the pan and season to taste. Simmer for 2 minutes or until meatballs are heated through.

Ladle into bowls, sprinkle with coriander and serve with crusty bread, if you like.