meaty goodness

My gal had a friend over for a sleepover tonight, so I set them to work making dinner to earn their keep. We had baked chicken meatballs with linguine and damn, they were good. Here's the recipe:

600g chicken mince

6 thin slices of prosciutto, chopped

4 french shallots, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

1 slice of bread, grated

1 egg

1/2 tsp dried thyme

grated rind of 1/4 lemon

salt, pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together and form into balls the size of ping pong balls. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake at 180 for around 20 minutes or until golden and firm, turning once during cooking.

Serve on linguine with a simple sauce made with passata, garlic, onion, pesto, red wine vinegar, white wine, salt and pepper.

If desired you could stir meatballs through the sauce and leave them to simmer for 10 minutes, but these were crispy on the outside, tender on the inside and had such an array of flavours from the lemon and prosciutto I'd serve them on top of the sauce {and actually, I did - with just a grating of parmigano regiano over the top}.

The girls were chuffed with themselves and gobbled their whole plate up {asking for extra meatballs mind}, my husband thought they were divine, and I got yet another lemon fix for my tastebuds. Gotta be happy with that!