Conor’s Lions Head Meatballs!

One of the first bloggers that I met when I started this blog is Conor Bofin of “One Man’s Meat.” What we have in common is a love of food! The first recipe of his that I tried was Black bean beef in 30 minutes. This dish was so easy to make, and it was so tasty, that we ate the whole dish in one sitting! He recently featured another recipe that caught my eye, and that recipe is Open your mind with lions head meatballs! My husband and I loved this dish too, and Conor gave me permission to feature his recipe on my blog! Thank you Conor, not only for allowing me to do this, but for being a long-distant friend!

Conor’s List of Ingredients
5 pork chops
6 heads of bok choi
1 pint of chicken stock
1 TBS of garlic
1 TBS of ginger
3 or 4 spring onions
1 heaped TBS of cornflour (cornstarch here in the U.S.)
a splash or two of soy sauce
a splash of rice wine or sherry
salt and pepper to taste

Now Conor’s recipe calls for grinding your own meat (including the fat). Not having a meat grinder, I went off to the grocery anticipating having the butcher do this for me but I was able to find a nicely marbled ground pork. Not sure how much to buy, I bought two packages to make sure that I would have enough meat.

Heading into the kitchen, I began to prepare this easy dish. I apologize now for not taking a lot of photos…

Starting with the pork, I added this to a mixing bowl. The recipe calls for adding the garlic, ginger, spring onions, cornstarch, rice wine and soy sauce. I got busy chopping. I used 3 large garlic cloves which came up to a good heaping TBS which the recipe calls for. Next I cut the ginger into chunks, then peeled and chopped this up too. Another good heaping TBS! Next on the chopping block: The spring onion, of which I used 3 as they were fairly big. Then I added the rest of the list.

Now Conor has a fancy device in his kitchen and his photos show mixing the meat up with what appears to be Captain Hook’s hook! Not having this luxury, I dove in with my hands and mixed the lot up! I actually did this hours before cooking them so that all those lovely flavors would meld. Then I took the meat out to warm up an hour before I started cooking, shaping them into golf ball sized meatballs.

The lovely meatballs!

The next step is to brown the meatballs. I did add a bit of peanut oil to the pan, heating it up over medium heat, and then fried up the meatballs browning them on all sides until they are mostly cooked.

Browned meatballs

In a separate pan I added the pint of chicken broth. Now I added two other ingredients to the broth for an extra zing! I added about 1 TBS of sesame oil, and a couple of shakes of ground white pepper. When the meatballs are browned, remove them from the fry pan to the broth. Bring this up to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 minutes.

Next add the bok choi.

Lovely baby bok choi

I used baby bok choi cutting off the root end. When the bok choi has wilted, the dish is ready! I did as Conor suggested and served this with steamed long grain rice. And here is what the final dish looks like!

The finished dish!

Very, very tasty stuff there Conor! And again, I thank you for allowing me to feature your recipe, and for giving us another recipe that is a definite keeper! We will be having leftovers of this dish tonight and I know that they will be just as good! Please do go and check out some of Conor’s other amazing recipes! To get to his site, just click here!

Thanks for stopping by today, and I wish you a magnificent Monday, and an excellent week too!