red chilli

We’re still in comfort food season in the UK. There may be sunshine during the day but the nights are cooler and a hearty dish is just the ticket. Meat doesn’t happen every day at The Birdhouse so when it does it is given careful consideration from beginning to end. An unexpected sunny evening has led us to cook outside. Everything is better outside, isnt it?

Meatballs are a family fave. Any style is good but, household heritage dictates that it is curried meatballs today. Lamb takes spices well and has the fat to avoid drying out too much. Let’s go make meatballs!

You should be prepared for the vast quantity of ingredients we have used here. This is Pakistani Asian cooking. Every Pakistani household would have all of these ingredients to hand. If you don’t then perhaps buy a jar of sauce. Unapologetic.

The dish is our own Birdhouse recipe. Not necessarily unique but no recipe books were opened or packet mixes used. All ingredients were carefully chosen, as basic as possible and blended by us for our own tastes. No hacks here. All quantities can be adjusted to suit your good selves. We are just a guide.

We have a wonderful local butcher: Kevin. He will supply all sorts of meaty goodies at the drop of a hat. He has minced a kilo of lamb shoulder for us. This will easily feed our family of six and maybe we’ll use any leftover sauce to turn into a ‘slightly’ more veggie meal next week (add a can of chickpeas, fry off some paneer, slice in tofu, a bag of spinach…your choice).

Here we go:

For the meatballs:

1kg lamb mince
2 green finger chillies, finely chopped (check they’re good and hot)
10 cardamom pods (yes, really ten)
3 allspice berries
3 cloves
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
a small handful of coriander seeds
a tablespoon of black peppercorns
half a cup of fried onions. These can be fried by hand or, bought pre-fried.
teaspoon of salt

The meatballs are flavoured with highly aromatic spices. This is not a dish for the fainthearted.

Grind up the spices with the salt, add to the mince, along with the garlic, green chilli and the fried onions. Smoosh the mince together and shape into walnut sized meatballs. Fry until golden brown.

It’s always worth doing a little taste test by frying a mini patty. This will give you a chance to taste the seasoning and heat levels before frying the whole batch of meatballs. And gives you an excuse to eat the meatballs before anyone else!

For the Sauce:

Whole spices: 3 bay leaves, 2 black cardamom pods, 4 green cardamom pods, 1 cinnamon stick
3 onions, sliced
2 red chillies, mild. Our’s come from Watt’s Farm, via Ocado. Seeds and all.
Tomato paste
Ginger root
Fresh turmeric
1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
2 tablespoons corainder seeds
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
3 allspice berries
3 tablespoons garam masala
Chilli flakes/powder to taste. We used our Birdhouse blend from 2019.
2 cans coconut milk
4 hardboiled eggs (honestly, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it)

Grind the seed spices: fenugreek, coranider, appsice and black pepper. Add the garam masala. Blend the ginger, garlic, tomato paste and turmeric with water until it is a smooth paste. Fry the onions in a little sunflower oil. Add the whole spices and then the spice grind. Fry off until the aromatic oils are released. Add the ginger/garlic/tomato blend. Add now the coconut milk. Cook until it had reduced to about half.

Or just plop everything in a pan until it is a brown, thick amalgam.

Still with us? Here we go for another round. We promise you’ll have a scrummy dinner at the end of this epic journey.

For the final dish:

Add the meatballs to the sauce
Add hard boiled eggs if you like that sort of thing.
Bubble away until it is all thick and unctuous. We’re cooking on a kadai but this stage could happen on the hob or in an oven.

And now the dish is ready. Meatballs are served with homemade bread, chopped salad and plain yoghurt.

Is it worth it? Totally. Cooking is a tonic for the soul. Feed yourselves and your family well and all is well.

Capsicum pubescens is a late entry to the heated propagator. Whilst using the last of our homegrown Rocoto chillies it was impossible to just throw the seeds away. So, they were introduced to the chitting pod. Having sworn we would get going earlier with the seeds this year, to allow the longest growing period possible, a quick diary check reveals that these seeds are starting off at pretty much the same time as last year. So much for planning.

Four days later the roots have emerged. Much quicker than the chinense types and almost as quick as the speedy annuums.

chitted-rocoto-chillies — Chitted Rocoto seeds

And why did we bother with these seeds? Well, it turns out we’ve got a bit of a crush on these squishy fellas. There are far less varieties of Capsicum pubescens available on the market and you would certainly never see them in a UK food store to buy. The chilli fruit are all pretty similar with thick walls, juicy flesh and matt black seeds. With a round shape: some are a little more apple shaped, others lemony and some occasionally cheeked like bell peppers. Heat levels are medium to hot and they have a punchy fresh fruit flavour. They come in a range of -green-yellow-red but not purple or white. So far.

Capsicum pubescens are the smaller group of the five domesticated species of chilli. They are further away from others genetically. They trace back to pre-Incan times in Peru. In fact it is thought that the chilli remains found in the Guitarrero caves 10,000 years ago was a pubescens type. Historically significant as the chilli in question was found alongside evidence of campfires, grinding stones and human bones. It seems chillies were considered pretty valuable food stuffs. Not much has changed in 10,000 years then.

At The Birdhouse, we only grew one plant of this type last year: the high shine red Alberto Rocoto Locato. Gifted to us by my mother. It was easy to spot in the greenhouse as the plant grew differently to the others. For one, it had tiny white hairs on its leaves. Secondly, once it had got going, it split into two branches about 30cm up. It then sprawled out sideways and needed support from other plants. It snapped easily if knocked. It had bright violet flowers, with dusty white stamen. The chillies were late to set and took a long time to ripen to glossy red, maybe a 100 days or more. It matured about sometime similar to the Scotch Bonnets and they supposedly take 120 days. The plant was prolific despite being in a smallish 2.5 L pot. Whilst it was fed well it could probably have done with more root space.

A quick bit of research tells us that these chillies are a fan of cooler nights, although still happy basking during the day. They are far more tolerant to lower temperatures generally. Although not frost tolerant. This bodes well for a UK climate and the need for a longish growing season. They are also long lived perennials, living up to 15 years. They can be climbers or tree formations. I think we might have a few Winter inmates this year. Let the pubescens journey begin.

Birdhouse Chillies

Adventures in growing and cooking chillies

Aromatic Lamb Meatballs

For the meatballs:

For the Sauce:

For the final dish:

Capsicum pubescens