Recipe: Turkey meatballs in tomato sauce

I am still trying to be healthy and in that vein I have found myself cooking with a lot of turkey recently. My latest recipe attempt was to create turkey meatballs in a tomato sauce served on wholewheat pasta for me and my girlfriend.

I put a thick slice of wholemeal bread, cut the crusts off and then gave it a quick whizz in the blender. I then put these crumbs on a baking tray and placed them in oven at a heat of 100 degrees for 15 minutes.

While these were in the oven I finely chopped quarter of a red onion, half a chilli and a clove of garlic. I also chopped some fresh coriander (and if I had some I would have thrown in some fresh basil and oregano for good measure, instead I put in the dried variety). These all went into a mixing bowl with 250 grams of extra lean minced turkey breast and the now dried out bread crumbs. I also seasoned this mix with ground black pepper and some sea salt adding a splash of milk and some olive oil to help the binding. I then formed these into 10 balls the size of table tennis balls, I put these on a foil covered baking tray under a medium grill while I prepared the tomato sauce (you should probably turn them after 5 minutes and leave them under for no longer than 10).

The tomato sauce is a pretty standard affair, fry a base of the rest of the onion, a red pepper, finely chopped, a clove of garlic, a stick of celery and some chilli in a pressure cooker or frying pan (which has a lid, that will be used later). After a few minutes turn the heat down adding some chopped mushrooms, a tin of chopped tomatoes, some tomato puree, a squirt of tomato sauce and a splash of Worcester sauce, after about 5 minutes of letting that bubble get the meat balls from under the grill and carefully (without breaking them up) mix them into the sauce, cover with the lid and leave to cook.

At this point I usually put the spaghetti into cook, for this I used wholemeal as that is what I had in the cupboard but any spaghetti will do.

Ingredients:
250g Lean Turkey mince
1 Thick slice of wholemeal bread (with crusts removed)
50 ml of milk
Chopped Coriander, Basil and Oregano
Chopped chilli
Chopped Garlic
1 Red onion
1 Red capsicum pepper
Wholemeal Spaghetti.