A guest post from The Creative Pot

We are currently in our production week and the magazine is going to print next week. This means that all my WABing activities come to a grinding halt to make sure everything is out on time with as few errors as possible. Unfortunately my food blog is one of those activities but luckily for you, dear readers, I can get by with a little help from my food blogging friends.  Our next guest this evening is non other that Marisa from The Creative Pot .


You may have noticed (or at least I hope you have) that my images are improving. The reason for this dear readers, or really more the inspiration is Marisa's blog. See if you visit her blog, which I am sure you wont hesitate to do, you will immediately want to climb into your screen and have a feast. Her images make you think "I don't care how complicated the recipe is or if I have these ingredients or not I HAVE TO MAKE THAT!" and you will not be disappointed if you do, her concoctions are just as spectacular as her pictures. Don't believe me yet, take a look:

I am nothing if not dedicated to my craft. So much so that when I was gripped in the middle of a (up-to-now-unknown-to-me) soccer obsession, I managed to tear myself away from the excitement for long enough to study up on some Uruguayan food in honour of the sexy boys of Uruguay.
And it was no mean feat either. For one, there weren't a lot of information online about Uruguayan food - the sexy men must have some super secretive womenfolk in their kitchens at home.  And secondly, the information that was available was mostly in Spanish. Which I am mostly unfamiliar with, barring an unfulfilled yearning to speak Spanish fluently one day. But sadly, no habla Espanol as of yet. Enter my friend, Google translate, which helpful though it was, also caused some smirks on my side at the sometimes painly obvious translation mistakes. Eg. Lengua stifado, which Google translated as Language Stew. (In case you were interested, the correct translation should've been Tongue Stew).

Nevertheless I forged on until I happened on this beauty of a recipe. Meatballs. I can hear you already: "Meatballs? Really? LadyRaven why did you give us this boring person with her boring old meatball recipe?" Because, really, what can be new about a meatball? 
Oh but you haven't tried these - they come with raisins embedded in their meaty insides. Raisins! And as I'm a sucker for fruit/meat (indeed any sweet/savoury) combos, I whipped out my minced meat, shook in some raisins and started forming the mixture into soccer imitating balls. You know, in the spirit of the World Cup and all that. Definitely not your normal meatball. Damn tasty though. But don't tell those secret-hoarding Uruguyan women that I've let the cat out of the bag. They might send their men to come pummel me...


Albóndigas con pasas de uva (Raisin Meatballs)
Adapted from Recipes Wiki
Serves 4
500g (approx 1 lb) minced (ground) beef
2 eggs
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp chopped parsley
4 tbsp breadcrumbs
1/3 cup raisins
salt and pepper to taste
sunflower oil
2 leeks, white part only, sliced
5 carrots
1/2 cup semi-sweet white wine
1. Place meat in a bowl, add eggs unbeaten, parsley, bread crumbs, salt and pepper, raisins, chopped garlic boys.
2. Mix all of this, then form into 8 meatballs, dip in flour and fry in hot oil.
3. Brown them well and remove from the heat, reserve.
4. In the same oil, put the white of leek, sliced, cooked a bit and add carrots, peeled and cut rather small, the kitchen a moment, put back the meatballs to the pan, add the wine is left uncovered so that the alcohol evaporates, add enough water to cover the remaining meatballs, add 1 tablespoon salt, cook till the carrots are tender. 


If you enjoyed this post, you will most certainly enjoy the rest of my shenanigans over at The Creative Pot. Or come & say hi on twitter. Or facebook. Even better, you can subscribe to my RSS feed so you never miss out on any of my posts. Happy cooking!