Chinese Style Turkey Meatballs

This was a fun twist on spaghetti and meatballs. The flavors of cilantro, sesame oil and soy sauce give the meatballs a distinct Asian flare.  I'd say that the meatballs taste a lot like the meat filling of a gyoza dumpling.  I love me some gyoza, or potstickers, but they can be a bit on the fussy side.  (Mine always stick to the pan, and not in a good way.) These meatballs were all the yummy without all the work.

We ate our meatballs with soba, Japanese buckwheat noodles, to follow through with the Asian theme.  I'm sure you could use regular thin spaghetti if you can't find or don't like soba.  We happen to love it, and our grocery store carries it in the Asian foods aisle.  Yay!

I really liked that these meatballs were baked and make from lean turkey.  A win win situation in my book. 

Blockette was rather indifferent towards the sauce.  I thought it had a good balance of salty, sweet and tangy.  I just dipped my meatballs one by one in the sauce, but Mrblocko poured the sauce over his entire dish. 

Chinese style turkey meatballs from Disney's Family.com
Meatballs:
1 pound ground turkey
2 scallions, very finely chopped
1/2 cup very finely chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 cup fine, dry bread crumbs (unseasoned)
1 egg, lightly beaten


Sweet Soy Dipping Sauce:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 or 3 slices fresh ginger smashed with the side of a heavy knife

To make the meatballs: Heat the oven to 400. Gently mix together the ingredients (hands are best for this), then form meatballs by rolling tablespoon-sized scoops between your palms. (I used a small cookie scoop) Arrange on a lightly oiled or parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes, until well-browned and cooked through.

To make the dipping sauce: In a small pot, stir all the ingredients together over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves. Simmer 3 or so minutes, stirring frequently, until the sauce thickens a bit. Fish out the ginger and serve in small cups for dipping.

Pineapple Tarts for Chinese New Year

Yeah, Chinese New year was on Jan 23rd, but I've had a bit of a posting backlog.  I guess I'm just making things faster than I'm able to find time to write about them.  I often wonder if other bloggers, particularly those with a huge following, have a similar problem and they are just better at hiding it than I am.  Of course, I'm not really hiding it if I come right out and say I made these two weeks ago.

But let's get on to the good stuff...these pineapple tarts from Rasa Malayasia, or as Blockette likes to call them, Pineapple dumplings.  I'd never had these little cookie like tarts before, so I didn't know exactly how they were supposed to taste.  The original recipe made 24, but as I wasn't sure if they'd be good/I'd screw them up, so I halved the recipe and only made 12.  Why oh why did I do that? They turned out to be really tasty and I was kicking myself that I didn't have more!

This is a horrible picture of the pineapple tarts right from the oven.  Wow is the light in my kitchen ever rotten!

The exterior is like a soft slightly flaky crust.  It's not too flaky as I used butter and no shortening.  If you wanted a super flaky crust, I think using half shortening would be the thing to do.  Although, I think a super flaky exterior would make for a messy treat.

For the interior you basically make your own pineapple jam.  I used canned pineapple cause it was on sale at the store.  The fresh stuff also looked nasty in addition to being uber expensive. 

Pineapple jam filling inside the tiny tart.

The tarts are supposed to have little crisscross hash marks on them to imitate the lines on a real pineapple.  My dough did not want to come together.  It was super duper crumbly, so I added about 3T of milk.  I'm fairly certain that was 1 T of milk too much.  The dough then went the other way, and became too sticky.  I had a hard time making an impression in the tarts without having the dough stick to the fork.  I decided against adding some more dry ingredients just in case I over did that as well.  The dough wasn't perfect, but it was easier to work with than crumbly dough.

I'll definitely make these pineapple tarts again, but I'll just make sure to be a bit more careful adding additional liquid!

Pineapple tarts half recipe from Rasa Malaysia
For the pasty filling
1 1/2 ce flour
1 stick butter
1 egg yolk
2 T powdered sugar
1 T cornstarch
1 egg yolk (lightly beaten for egg wash)

For the pineapple filling
1 (20 oz) can sliced pineapples
5 T sugar (I think if you are using the pineapple with corn syrup 4T is plenty sweet)
1/2 t cornstarch  (mixed with 1/2 t water)

Drain pineapple slices and squeeze extra water/juice with hands. Blend pineapples til mushy. Using medium heat, cook pineapple and sugar until most liquid has evaporated, and filling turned golden. (My filling never changed color and I babysat the pesky thing for 30 min.)Stirring constantly using a wooden spoon to avoid burning. Taste, and add more sugar when needed. Add in cornstarch to thicken filling. Let it cool in the fridge.

Combine flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar into a medium bowl. Soften butter to room temp. Add in  egg yolk and flour. Knead to form dough. (I did this by hand but you could use a pastry blender if you wanted to.)

Divide dough into 12 equal rounds. (I had a few tablespoons of leftover pineapple filling.) Flatten pastry dough with your palms and put a tsp or so of pineapple filling in the middle and use the dough to cover the filling. Use your palms to round it up and then shape it into a roll about 1.5 inch long. Use a fork to make criss-cross patterns on the tart and then brush it with the egg wash.

Preheat the oven for 350F and bake for 20-25 minutes or until light brown.