This was one of those dishes that Seb and I kind of put together one October afternoon while his brother was at a birthday party and Ophelia was happily playing with all the toys uninterrupted.
Seb is of the age where he is happy to experiment with me in the kitchen and this makes me truly happy. We went in with an idea for a meatball pie and then came out with pork and sesame meatballs with peanut butter and soy sauce noodles. I let him direct the dish: I gave him the options we could make and he decided what he wanted to use. I am so crazy proud of him for this. He also displayed an unprecedented level of patience during making this which is no mean feat seeing as he seems to have inherited my temperament.
When making the meatballs we talked about textures and scents of the ingredients. We also made different sized meatballs and Seb took great delight in using as many different adjectives to mean big or small to describe them. Who said cooking with the kids only teaches them about food?
Anyway now I have finished gushing over what a wonderful job he did, here’s how we made them.
Ingredients
For the meatballs
- 1 pack of sausage meat
- 1tbsp ground almonds
- 3tbsp sesame seeds
- 1tsp garlic salt
- 1/8tsp Chinese Five Spice
- Seasoning
For the noodles and sauce
- 150ml almond milk
- 1/4 scant cup of smooth peanut butter (the type with no added sugar)
- 2tbsp soy sauce
- 2tbsp sesame seeds
- 1 carrot grated
- 60g sweetcorn
- 2 nests of noodles
Method
- Preheat the oven to 170°c and put a silicone baking mat on a baking sheet.
- Put all the ingredients for the meatballs into a bowl and squish and squash together with your hands.
- Pick up around 1tsp of the mixture at a time and roll into balls in your hands and then place on the baking sheet. Seb used different amounts for the different sizes. Repeat until all the meat is finished.
- Either paint them all with a small amount of oil or spray with frylight.
- Put in the oven to cook for 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, cook the noodles until they are al dente.
- Add the ingredients for the peanut sauce
in a bowl and mix well. - Put the cooked noodles and the meatballs in an oven proof dish and pour over the sauce and gently mix it all together.
- Cover the oven proof dish with foil and place in the oven for 10-15 minutes to finish cooking the noodles and warm through the sauce.
I hope you enjoy this recipe if you make it.
