Women from İzmir are well known for their beauty and cleverness in cooking. Although not from İzmir, I had to add this recipe of Meatball and Vegetable Casserole from İzmir Köfte to my blog as it a very delicious main dish. I do hope they will not mind and bombard me with their own versions of İzmir Köfte.
Another version of İzmir Köfte requires the meatballs and the vegetables to be fried before going into the oven. This recipe takes shorter time to make as there all the cooking is done in one oven dish and all goes to the oven directly.
I have already written a lot about how to make delicious meatballs, in the home style meatballs recipe. So all the tips I have given there are also valid for the meatballs to be used in this recipe. Knead a lot, rest in fridge, knead again and then shape the meatballs.
Slice the potatoes thin or else they might not cook as well as you expect them to. However if you want to make sure that they are well done, you can boil them half way before adding to the oven tray.
When preparing to go into the oven place the meatballs and potatoes side by side closely to obtain a nice shape. Because the meatballs are not cooked separately some parts might look pink and make you think that they are not cooked enough, do not worry this is how they are supposed to look and they are definitely cooked.
Serve as a main dish, a nice eggplant salad and a rice pilaf will be perfect companions to this dish.
Enjoy.
Meatball and Vegetable Casserole from Izmir
Ingredients
Meat Balls
- 750 grams ground meat minced twice, beef, from plate part
- 1 onion large, grated
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 75 grams bread crumbs
- 75 millilitres baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon cummin
- 5-6 stalks parsley chopped, optional
Vegetables
- 3 potatoes
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 green pepper
Sauce
- 1 tablespoon pepper paste
- 2 tomatoes grated
- 240 millilitres water
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 pinch black pepper
Instructions
Meatball
- Choose meat that is from the plate of beef and if possible have it minced twice. If not you can use your food processor to have it minced twice.
- Place the meat and all the other meatball ingredients in a bowl and knead for at least 10 minutes to have all the material well blended.
- Rest in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.
- When time is out, take the loaf outside and knead for another 5 more minutes then start to shape.
- Take walnut sized pieces and roll in your hand and make the shape as desired. Traditionally the shape is oval and flat to make sure the core of each meatball is cooked too.
Vegetables
- Slice the tomatoes to large but thin pieces.
- Peel the potatoes and cut into large but thin slices.
- Take out and discard the seeds of peppers. Then cut again to be similar length with potatoes.
Sauce
- Add all the sauce ingredients in a small bowl and mix well.
Combining and cooking
- Take an oven dish and place a meat ball and a potato and again a meat ball and potato until all of them are finished.
- On top of the potatoes place the peppers. Make sure that the shiny parts are facing down so they do not get burnt.
- On top place the tomato slices.
- And finally pour the sauce evenly all around.
- Cook for about 45-50 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 200° Celcius.