Tandoori Turkey Meatball Rice Bowl

I confess that I'd hoped that these would be more colourful than they turned out - my masala blend was months old, which I suspect was the problem, and I should have compensated by adding a little turmeric and an extra hit of kashmiri pepper, by the looks of it. However mild in appearance, though, these were absolutely delicious, and made a satisfying dinner.

That being said, these were remarkably easy to make. My standard Pork & Turkey Meatballs got an Indian inspired, all-turkey facelift, replacing the usual herbs and spices with a generous amount of tandoori masala, and using egg white instead of whole egg (I had some to use up).

I scooped the meatballs using my 60 ml disher, and baked them off on a foil-lined baking sheet for 25 minutes:

While they were in the oven, I made a simple pulao, using this Times of India Online recipe for Pulao in a Jiffy The pulao was nice, but overall a little soft, I thought - I used carrots and cauliflower from the recommended vegetables listed, but either I diced them too finely, or used too much water, because they were a little softer than I expected. Not outright mush, you understand, but a bit too soft. I generally find that I need less water when I'm cooking rice than most recipes call for, and that may be the case here - I'm not sure why - some sort of combination of being essentially at sea level, and having very soft water, perhaps? In any event, if I were to make this recipe again, I might go with both larger cut vegetables and a smidge less water. I'd probably throw in a few peas, and an extra few pods of cardamom, too.

When the meatballs came out of the oven, they got a quick brush with hot mango chutney, which went beautifully with the spicy flavour of the meat. As you can see, I also knocked together a quick cucumber and onion raita, and put an extra bit of chutney on the side.

This was a fun dinner (and lunch the next day, and extra meatballs in the freezer for a future rainy day) and while I want to tweak both the pulao and the seasoning of the meatballs (to amp them up into a more deeply fragrant and colourful result), I'm quite looking forward to version 2.0.