Tuna Meatballs

My cookbooks have been packed away for what seems like an eternity, I've missed being able to have a quick flick through them for inspiration, so this weekend it was finally time to wade through the depths of our junk piles and retrieve my books from exile.  Well Phil did, I'm not trusted to go amongst the junk without knocking it all over on top of me...

One of the books I dusted off was Jamie's Italy.  A few recipes jumped out at me, so there'll be a few Italian ones coming up over the next few weeks - but one I really fancied trying was Le migliori polpette di tonno (the best tuna meatballs).  I used Jamie's recipe as the basis for mine, but very much improvised with what I had in the cupboards.

Ingredients

Pack of Aldi frozen Tuna steaks

100g breadcrumbs

50g grated hard cheese

dried oregano

dried parsley

2 eggs

leftover sweetcorn

glug of bottled lemon juice

glug of bottled lime juice

Method

I made a very basic tomato sauce, using one tin of tomatoes, a squeeze of tomato puree and one tsp of minced garlic, and left it to simmer while I made the tuna meatballs.

As per Jamie's recipe, I chopped up the tuna into about 1inch pieces and then fried them in fry lite with a splash of bottled lemon juice, and a splash of bottled lime juice.  I suppose the lime isn't very Italian - but I just couldn't resist adding that.  I fried them off for a minute on each side, just getting a bit of colour on the pieces.

I then combined the cheese (poor mans parmesan), herbs and breadcrumbs in a bowl and added the tuna to it.  I left that until it was cooled down enough to handle and then added the eggs, leftover sweetcorn and another splash of lemon juice.

To make the meatballs I squelched the mixture up into balls - now here is where I probably should have listened to Jamie, cos mine were more beach ball size than his golf ball sized ones...  Then fried them in olive oil until crispy on all sides.

I served with the tomato sauce, and some spaghetti.

The verdict  - I liked them, less fatty than using the usual beef/pork mince, but I can see why Jamie added the pine nuts, I would have liked a bit more texture in mine - but I suppose I could try adding some broken up crackers to achieve the same effect texturally. I liked adding in the sweetcorn, and it managed to fool the youngest into eating them, but sadly my eldest picked all the sweetcorn out of hers...  I'd like to give these a try with tinned tuna, to see if this is one I could make cheaper - although the Aldi tuna steaks are excellent value.