I made these on a whim about a month ago because the recipe sounded different. Most of the way through I realized that I was basically making croquettes. Not a bad thing, just a weird thing to realize half way through.
The real reason I’m posting the recipe, though, is because I thought the cream sauce for it was really interesting. It uses grated carrots to make a semi sweet sauce, and I’ve just never had anything like that before.
For the tefteli/croquettes:
1 pound ground chicken
1 pound ground pork
2 eggs
1 small onion, finely chopped
1-2 cups cooked white rice
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
2 cups breadcrumbs
vegetable oil for frying
For the sauce:
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and grated
2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp sour cream
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup water
4 cloves garlic
1/2-1 tbsp paprika, depending on how much you like
1 bullion cube
salt and pepper to taste
Directions
First, make the tefteli. Mix the meats, eggs, onion, rice, garlic, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. I mash everything together with my hands, but you could use a large spoon if you want. Put the breadcrumbs in a separate bowl.
Take the meat mixture and form it in to balls a little less than an inch thick. As you finish each ball, roll it in the breadcrumbs until covered. The easiest thing to do is to put them on a cookie sheet until you get all of them done. If you think the meat mixture is too wet and hard to work with, feel free to add some of the breadcrumbs directly to it to dry it out some.
Once you have all the meatballs rolled and coated, you’re going to want to start to fry them. Heat oil over medium high heat in a large frying pan. Put one of the meatballs in the pan and flatten it out with a spatula, until it’s about half an inch thick. Repeat until you have the pan full, and fry them 3-4 minutes to a side, at which point they should be done. Transfer the cooked meatballs to another large bowl, and keep repeating until all of them are done. It takes a while.
Now to make the sauce.
Heat about 2 tbsp oil, the carrots, onion, and garlic in a small pot. Saute everything together until the carrots are soft.
Add the flour and stir quickly until blended.
Add all of the other sauce ingredients and bring to a boil, at which point you have the sauce done. Pour it over the tefteli that you have in your bowl and gently stir everything together until they are coated (NOTE: Unless you want to save them for later, in which case store the sauce separate).
These things are really really good, you can eat them as a main course (which I did) or you can serve them by themselves as appetizers.
eatbensmeat 