Meatballs in mushroom sauce

This is a lovely flavourful main course and is very easy to make.  The meatballs can be nestled into many of your dishes to add extra protein, such as your Napoli sauce or shakshuka.  Make them larger and cook them as hamburgers. You can substitute beef mince for the chicken, plus add some grated carrots, finely diced celery, leeks.  The mixture is blitzed in the food processor so can be easily incorporated into the meat.  The mushroom sauce is hearty and versatile, adding it to cooked eggs or zucchini noodles.  If you would like a ‘true sauce’, purée it and serve it with a variety of chicken, veal, or meat dishes.
Serves 8

For the meatballs: Take a large bowl and mix the minces. Peel and roughly chop the onion and garlic, wash and roughly chop the zucchini.  Roughly chop the bacon.  Place these all into the bowl of your food processor and blitz until small enough to be added to the mince.  Do not over process. Add this to the mince, plus the cheese, psyllium husks, and egg.  Mix well the combine either with a wooden spoon or wet hands.
Add some sea salt and ground pepper; to check the seasoning, take a small knob of the mince and fry it off in some olive oil and butter and taste it.  Adjust the seasoning and repeat until it is to your liking.
With wet hands, form into small balls about the size of a walnut, weighing approximately 20 – 25 grams.
Set these aside for about 10 minutes while you prepare the sauce.  The reason for this is so that the psyllium husks swell and help the balls stick together when being cooked.
You can also either freeze these uncooked balls or freeze any left-over cooked meatballs.
To cook the meatballs: melt the 25 grams of butter with 20mls of extra virgin olive oil in a large frying pan, over medium to high heat.  When the pan is sizzling, add a few meatballs, and cook in batches with just a few at a time, so you do not overload the pan.  The problem with overloading the pan is that this causes the heat in the pan to drop, so the meatballs do not brown and caramelise. Continue to pan-fry the meatballs, turning and rolling them around in the pan until browned and caramelised. Remove from the pan and repeat until they are all cooked; add more butter and olive oil as needed.  Set aside and keep warm.  When the mushroom sauce is simmering and reducing, add the meatballs and gently cook them for up to 15 minutes or so.
For the mushroom sauce: take a clean frying pan and add 30ml of extra virgin olive oil and 25g butter, add the onions, place over medium heat and cook for 10 minutes, stirring from time to time without browning. Add the garlic and sprigs of thyme and cook for a minute, stirring occasionally.  Remove from the pan and set aside.  Raise heat to medium-high and add the remaining extra virgin olive oil and butter and heat until sizzling.  Cook the mushrooms, in small batches, so you do not reduce the heat in the pan.  Toss and stir them around until nicely browned and caramelised, about 5 minutes. Set aside as each batch is cooked. You may need an extra drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and some more butter for this.
Return the onion mixture to the pan with the mushrooms.
Season with sea salt cracked pepper. Add stock, red wine, and cream; bring to a simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the meatballs to the mushroom sauce and continue to gently simmer until the liquid has reduced and thickened.
Taste and repeat seasoning, if necessary, until it is to your liking.  Serve, garnished with fresh parsley, thyme, or chives.