Athlete's Cookbook - Athlete Recipes
Chicken and Eggplant Meatballs
Key Features
- Variable carbohydrate level
- Excellent protein source
- Low fat
- Nutritious and flavoursome
This is a fairly simple meal to prepare, but you do need to get your hands dirty rolling meatballs. But you can view this as enjoying a meal. It's an excellent way of adding some veggies to your main meal, if you don't have time to make a salad to go with it. You can increase the refuelling capacity by having extra rice to suit your needs, and conversely you can reduce the kilojoule intake by having more salad and less rice. I actually used turkey mince instead of chicken mince which tasted great, although it was probably a little higher in fat as it was the leg meat or brown meat rather than the low fat breast meat. This meatball dish would also work well with pasta as a carbohydrate source, but give the trait a miss as it wouldn't suit as well. You could also add some chilli in the mix if you like a bit of spice!
INGREDIENTS
(Serves 2-3)
Meatballs
- cooking spray
- 450g chicken mince
- ½ medium sized eggplant, cut into 1cm cubes
- 1 tsp grated lemon zest
- 1 tbsp finely chopped mint leaves
- 1 tbsp finely sliced green onions
- 1 ½ cups tomato pasta sauce
Raita
- 200g tub low fat natural yoghurt
- 100g low fat ricotta (optional)
- 1 small Lebanese cucumber
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
- 1 tsp chopped mint leaves
Method
- Spray a large frying pan with oil. Add eggplant and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, until very soft. You can add small amounts of water to the pan to prevent sticking. Cool.
- Put mince, zest, mint and onion into a large bowl, then add cooked eggplant. Mix together and mould ~20 meatballs with your hands.
- Spray the pan with oil again, and brown the meatballs. Add the tomato pasta sauce to the pan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer with the lid on for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the Raita by grating the cucumber and squeezing out the excess liquid. Mix the yoghurt, mint, ricotta and garlic, to a paste then fold in the cucumber
- Serve the meatballs with steamed rice, green salad and Raita.
Tags: EGGPLANT, FRY, GLUTEN FREE, GREEK, HIGH CARB, LOW CARB, LOW FAT, LOW SODIUM, MAIN COURSE, MEAT, MODERN FUSION, NO SUGAR, POACH, RICE AND GRAINS