Spicy Indian Meatballs, Spiced Cauliflower and Saag

It was international night at my house this evening a la The Silver Spoon!  Due to my upcoming wedding and my perpetual carb bloat, about the face, due to the SS, I am avoiding carbs until I am married.  Therefore, I am placing an additional challenge to this already challenging project, no carbs while cooking The Silver Spoon(at least for three months).  Because of this additional complication, I will be specially choosing recipes to do until my special day.    

Spicy Indian Meatballs are done with ground chicken, chile, garlic, and onion and that's it.  No bread needed which is great for me right now.  No egg either, although that issue is neutral.  As I turned to start assembling the meatballs I realized that I didn't have any chiles or cloves.  (This is another emerging theme of this project, my forgetfulness) I  blame MarketBasket as they didn't have any chile peppers when I was there, and I also blame myself. Admittedly, I'm not that good at making shopping lists, using them, following them, and organizing ingredients.  My fiance agreed to go get the missing items, awww isn't he great?  In the meantime I chopped garlic and made Spiced Cauliflower.  

Spiced Cauliflower is a simple salad of carrots, cauliflower and spice.  I chopped up a head of cauliflower, tossing all the tough root pieces and combined them with two shredded carrots.  I then, whisked together paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, white wine and oil, added it to the cauliflower and that was that.  Another recipe down in 5 minutes or less!

The fiance returned and I was able to add the chiles to my chicken and mix.  The directions instructed me to peel an additional onion and "stud" it with cloves.  I, then, fry the "studded onion" in a quarter cup of butter and throw it away.  I hate throwing perfectly good onions away, but I am here to listen, so I do.

To recap, I have a pan full of clove/onion flavored butter, and ground chicken with afore mentioned ingredients in meatball shapes.  I put the meatballs in the pan and fry them for ten minutes.  I do, and they stay together beautifully, way better than the last time I tried to make meatballs from the SS, you can read about my struggles here: http://aprojectforacook.blogspot.com/2010/01/meatballs-with-potatoes-and-spinach.html

While the meatballs were frying, I whipped up a quick Saag ala Adrian at http://www.thefreshdish.com/.  Please check out my friends' wonderful website that literally helps me out on a weekly basis.  I have cooked Adrian's Saag before and it is a surefire winner.  My BFF doesn't like Saag at our really good Indian restaurant but loves it when I make it, all because of Adrian. That is some good Saag.

After 10 minutes passed, I turned the heat down and cooked them through for an additional 20 minutes.  They turned a beautiful carmel color and smelled fantastic.    This recipe was easy and went really well with the Saag and Spiced Cauliflower.  For a Thursday night, I really outdid myself, and have rewarded myself with a kitchen full of dishes.  Oh well, dishes are a fact of life I suppose, SS or no.

Here's a pic for those inclined (Pat, I am looking at you)