Family friendly, hearty fare. 


Crispy cos lettuce, creamy avocado, gruyere cheese, peppery radish and cucumber splashed with verjuice – perfect partners with the rissoles. 

When I was a small child my mother would regularly make rissoles smothered in a a distinctive Eastern European style paprika-onion gravy and served with buttery mashed potatoes. The food would be accompanied by a little dinner music in the form of mum singing a jaunty tune about a lone meatball. In the song, a sorrowful morsel of meat strayed off the dinner plate, rolled onto the floor, out the door and ended up as a pile of mush – that’s the actual word in the lyrics – under a bush in the garden. I sometimes catch myself humming the tune to my children! 

It’s been a while since I sampled mum’s original rissoles, so I couldn’t quite recall her recipe and since I was in a hurry (yet again!) I improvised and ended up with this incredibly easy and delicious dinner dish. In fact I would even serve this up for a Sunday family lunch on a brisk, wintery day. It leaves the house smelling like sweet onions, roasted tomatoes and herbs and the tummy full and content. 

My rissoles – or rather giant meatballs as my five year old son Luka calls them – didn’t stand a chance of rolling off into the garden this evening. Plates piled high with rissoles, a rich oven baked cheesy vegetable and tomato sauce served with bite sized macaroni were pounced upon by my six children. A good run around before dinner always does the trick in boosting the appetites of busy children, before a bath, a book and finally bed. Ahh, the serenity of a quiet house…

Rissoles (Magnificently Giant Meatballs) to serve 8 – 10 people. You can successfully halve the quantity of ingredients if cooking for a smaller crowd. This dish can easily be made a day prior to being served up and then reheated in a fan forced oven. 

Ingredients for the Sauce
4 cloves garlic
2 medium zucchini
handful of mushrooms (5 – 6) – whatever is readily available, I used Swiss Brown. 
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon dried Italian herbs
1 teaspoon sugar
3 x 400g tins tomatoes
water – fill up 1 of the tins with water after the tomatoes have been emptied out
125ml of milk. 
sea salt to taste
olive oil

Roughly chop the zucchini and mushrooms into quarters and place them into either a food processor or a blender with the garlic and blitz until finely chopped. Scrape into a deep saucepan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and add the ginger and herbs. Sauté over a medium heat for 10 minutes. 

Add the remaining ingredients with the exception of the milk, and bring to the boil briefly. Turn down the heat down to LOW and simmer with the lid on for 30 minutes. When ready, pour in half a cup of milk.

In the meantime, make the rissoles…

1.5 kg good quality beef mince
1 large Spanish onion
1 large carrot
1 large egg
1 slice of bread (I used wholemeal sourdough because that was in the bread bowl)
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 cup pouring cream
sea salt and black pepper to taste

Finely dice the onion and grate the carrot. Place in a microwave safe dish, cover and cook in the microwave for 3 minutes on high. This will soften the onion in particular and remove the pungent after taste.

While the veg mixture is in the microwave, take out a deep glass or ceramic bowl and add the herbs, nutmeg, cream, salt and pepper, egg and bread (crumble this with your hands). Whisk using a fork to just combine. 

Add the mince and using super clean hands, mix thoroughly using a kneading motion, pulling and pushing the ingredients together into a manageable sticky mound. Make a well in the centre and add the onion and carrot. Once again mix with your hands. TIP – I only ever use one hand to mix the ingredients, whilst the other steadies the bowl. It also means you have a free, clean hand available to reach for more seasoning if needed, mark spelling homework, extract a curious toddler from the pantry and to turn on the kitchen tap at the end to wash off without making the entire area gunky. 

Scoop out handfuls of the rissole mixture and shape them into spheres about the size of a tennis ball. Place them into a large baking tray. This mixture will result in about 18 large rissoles. You may need two baking trays if the ones you have are not large enough to accommodate the lot. 

Carefully pour the sauce onto and around each meatball. Sprinkle over a heaped cup of grated cheese (Colby or mozzarella combined with a little parmesan is a good combination). Cover with aluminium foil and place in a preheated oven at 200 degrees conventional for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for an extra 5 or so minutes to slightly brown the top. 

Serve whilst still hot with either pasta, steamed rice, polenta or mashed potatoes…and don’t forget the salad. 


There’s always room for home baked dessert in the form of a classic lemon meringue pie. Guess who was the chief taste tester…?