Now that's a spicy meatball!

Ok so this blog is all about my love of spicy things!! I never liked spice before, a chicken tikka masala was the hottest thing that I could handle!! That was until I met my boyfriend, he turned me on to the world of chilli's. Now I can't cook a Stir-fry, curry or bolognese without turning up the heat! My favourtie chillis are the birds eye chilli's from asda, just little red and green gems that can kick a meal up a notch.

Then you have scotch bonnet chilli's which you can buy from tesco which are scorching hot but taste so lovely!!! Also, Jalapeno chilli's, now lets get this right it's pronounced: Hala-peeno. It isn't hard is it?? The J is silent!!!! Really bugs me when people get it wrong, like chipotle, its pronounced Chip-ot-ley, not Chip-otle!! Wtf people??

Ok rant over... Any way, a show that showcases some amazingly spicy food is Man VS Food, which can be found on Dave or the Good Food Channel. I just love this show, it makes me want to go to America so much! The premise is a normal guy travelling around America savouring the biggest and the best food that America has to offer. This often invloves him taking on some ridiculous eating challenge and winning... most of the time!

But anyway, my favourite spicy meal is pasta, bolognese sauce and spicy meatballs, and now I will attempt to write the recipe for y'all.

Ingredients:

Minced beef or lamb
Ground Cumin
Ground chilli powder (or kashmiri powder)
Onions
Mushrooms
Tinned, chopped Tomatoes
Pasta, spaghetti or any other variety
Cooking oil
Worcestershire Sauce
Tomato Sauce
Bird's eye chillis (or any other chilli)
Chilli Sauce (Any brand but not sweet chilli)
An Egg
Salt and pepper for seasoning
Cheddar cheese to serve

Method:

So first of all you want to make up your meatballs! Mix the minced meat, cumin and chilli powder in a bowl, then add half a diced onion, a whole chopped chilli (or two) and the egg for binding together. Mix it up with your hands!! It feels good! Ok... after mixing these ingredients together, start to roll out your meatballs into well, balls and make them as big or small as you want.

Get a frying pan started on a medium to high heat and another pan for the sauce. To the sauce-making pan add the other half of the onion, diced or thickly sliced depending on your preference and the mushrooms. When the mushrooms and onions are on their way add some salt and pepper for seasoning. Turn on the frying pan to brown your meatballs. Add the meatballs to the frying pan while checking your other pan doesnt burn. Add another chopped chilli into the sauce-pan if you want it hot!!!

Whilst the meatballs are browning, add the whole can of chopped tomatoes into your saucepan and stir. For flavour add a dash of worcestershire sauce, a big blob of tomato sauce (Heinz is best) and as much chilli sauce as you want. Now keep the sauce bubbling at a high temperature so that when the meatballs are nicley brown, they can continue to cook in the sauce.

Put on a big pan of water to boil and add salt to season. Add the pasta when the pan is boiling, then turn down the heat and place a lid on to let the pasta cook. Add the meatballs to the sauce when they are a lovely brown colour, they wont be cooked through at this point but the bubbling sauce should continue to cook them.

Now I usually sit down at this point and have a beer and a ciggie while everything is cooking away. If you want to keep an eye on the food that is cool, but this is my chill time.

Anyway, when everything is cooked, drain the pasta, and don't stir the meatballs too much or they might break and place into a bowl, then add some sauce and meatballs and add cheese to serve!! Viola!! Spicy meatballs and Pasta!

Now for a funny story to break up this post... One night my boyfriend was making a spicy bolognese for us, and he went through most of these recipe steps whilst making up the food. Needless to say, he had just chopped some chillis up and must have forgotten about it because he proceeded to go to the bathroom for a wee...

All I saw was him running in our bedroom, face and shirt soaking wet, gasping in agony and motioning at his crotch! At some point he must have rubbed his eyes with his hands too so that's why his eyes were streaming and he was in pain. I remember him saying: "babe, I am burning up, I need to have a cold shower!" so we bustled him into the shower, stripped naked with the water on the coolest setting... Our housemates at Uni found this hilarious I must say!! And that must have been the craziest chilli experience we have had, although his younger brother did get a chilli seed in his eye at Shanghi Fusion and that was pretty mad!

But that's a story for another time! Hope you enjoyed!! xxx

Hot, Hot, Hot!!

Hello again! It has been a while since I last posted, quite a while actually but I thought I would update with another rambling. The title of this post has to do with the lovely weather that were are experiencing in England at this very moment in time! Its only the first week of spring and it is boiling! Seriously it's like summer is already here! It makes me want a barbeque so bad!!

So I have a few stories about being in lovely hot weather to keep everyone entertained... Ok so family holiday to Weston Super-mare, well my mom, sister, brother, mom's boyfriend and his three kids all packed off to the beach for a day. The only thing was that I was seeing the son of my moms boyfriend too!! (Dodgey gornal relationships!!) Anyhoo... we bought a little dingy to paddle in, you could fit about 2-3 kids in it. So we were having fun with that, as I said lovely hot scorching weather(in england? I know...) when me and my boyfriend at the time decided to sail out on the dingy further than the other little kids, we were about 14-15 and have some fun on our own!!

Bit dodgey tho trying to balance in a dingy that is floating around in the sea not to mention how little space there was!! I was perched on top of the dingy doing... well i'll let you guess, when i spotted my mom and she was squinting right at us trying to see! I ducked right down in the dingy and was like oh shit!! Haha that scared us so bad we both jumped out and swam around a bit to seem like we were acting normal! Haha the memories!

Anyway, another memory I have of a scorching hot day is when I was about 13 and all I had on was a bikini top and a miniskirt (slutty I know!) and I was innocently walking up my street when a lad who was about 16, one of my neighbours, starts chatting me up. Now, he was quite a bit older than me and thinking back it's kind of sick that he would be chatting me up when I was a skinny 13 year old with hardly any boobs so speak of.

So as I was walking to the shops, he keeps following me and telling me how fit I am am, I didn't really like him at all or his family for that matter, when he says he will buy me a drink. So we get a can of pop from somewhere, then we walk back towards our street through the graveyard (seems silly but it was a shortcut!). When we are reaching the end of the graveyard he asks me for my number and I really dont want to give it to him! So I try and make some excuse.

But then suddenly he pushes me over onto the grass and looms above me... his shadow blocking out the harsh sunlight... and I am not liking where this is going at all. He sits down beside me and starts putting his hand up my leg going up my skirt and I am panicking now, he could do anything he wanted with me and there was no one around to stop him.

I had to think fast, so I threw the remainder of my can of pop all over him and ran for my life back home, he didn't follow me thank god but I am so glad that nothing worse happened that day. Anyway, some good memories, some bad, that's life. Now onto something more intellectual...

Seeing as how hot and sunny the weather is outside, I should really get off my laptop and go and enjoy it, and my favourite way of relaxing in the sun is reading a good book with a nice cold drink beside me. The book I am currently reading is the 8th book in a series by Kelley Armstrong. I just love these books! It has everything a girl could want, all female main characters, vampires, warewolves and magic!! If you love all of those things then I recommend this series to you, the first book is called Bitten and the main character is the only female warewolf!! Hope you enjoy reading them and thank you to my friend at work for lending them to me!!

Now I'm off to enjoy the sunshine...