New tastiness...

I did not prune and tend to the overgrown begonia in the solarium today.  Neither did I harvest and bundle the sage and thyme from my bed.  Mostly, I rested and thought about doing those things.  However, I did achieve a culinary goal I set for myself a few months ago:  a tasty chicken meatball.

Somewhere along the line, I heard about a making chicken meatballs with sun-dried tomatoes.  First, I had to track down ground chicken (not an easy feat).  Then, I had to track down a recipe (also not an easy feat).  Finally, I had to remember that I had actually bought the ground chicken and found the recipe and wanted to make them (most definitely NOT an easy feat).

I mostly found a recipe to use, but I had to adapt it.  For one, it called for 1.5 pounds of chicken and I had a 1 pound package.  Since it was so hard to track down, I wanted a recipe that fit the amount of ground chicken I could buy in a single package.  For another, the recipe had different herbs.  I wanted to use my fresh herbs, so I substituted those.  Other than working out the different amount of the ingredients to adjust to the lower amount of meat, I switched from processed to fresh bread crumbs.

When I got everything mixed together, I was a bit worried, because the mixture was ever so wet!  I wondered if the balls would even stay together, but they did.  The original recipe called for olive oil brushed across the tops of the meatballs.  I decided to use the olive oil that was packed with the sun-dried tomatoes.  In doing so, it basically coated all of the outside of the meatballs.  I really was a bit nervous popping them into the oven.

At first, when the timer went off, I admit that I thought the oven was not on because the meatballs looked pretty much the same as when they went into the oven!  However, when I stuck my thermometer into every single meatball, they all registered 165 degrees or higher.  I also admit that I was skeptical about how these ... blonde ... meatballs would taste.  However, the end result to my recipe tweak were some rather BLOODY FANTASTIC Sun-dried Tomato Chicken Meatballs!

I ate them with penne pasta and gruyere cheese sauce.  Whilst the pasty was tasty and the meatballs were tasty, they did not really fit well together.  They competed with each other instead of complementing.  So, I want to try a tomato cream sauce and, perhaps, angel hair pasta.  Or maybe even just a tomato sauce.  I am just not sure.  However, I have plenty of meat balls to find that perfect pairing of pasta and sauce!

I am quite pleased with this culinary success.  I learned my brother and his beloved will not be coming at Christmas, which is disappointing, although I understood why.  But, oh, man!  Would these have really floated his boat!