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+ servings

Eyeballs and Meat Sauce

As creepy as these look, they are DELICIOUS, and would be a perfect dinner on Halloween to enjoy with your kids or your friends! I think of these as a Japanese version of gnocchi, made with rice flour (shiratama ko) instead of potatoes.
Keyword: bolognese, dumplings, eyeballs, japanese, meat, rice, sauce
Servings: 2

Ingredients

Sauce:

  • 300 g ground beef
  • 1 slice bacon
  • ¼ cup onion diced
  • ¼ cup carrot diced
  • ¼ cup celery diced
  • 1 clove garlic minced
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • 200 g canned chopped tomato
  • 1 ½ tbsp olive oil
  • ½ cup red wine
  • 2 cups chicken stock
  • 1 bay leaf
  • a pinch each of salt pepper & sugar

Eyeball Dumplings:

  • 160 g shiratamako rice flour plus extra if needed
  • 30 g grated parmesan cheese
  • 200 ml water
  • salt & pepper
  • blue green and brown food coloring

Instructions

For the sauce:

  • Finely chop the bacon, then drizzle the olive oil into a pot set to medium heat. Add the bacon, onion, carrot, celery and garlic, and cook until the onions become translucent.
  • Add the ground beef and increase the heat to high. Once the meat has browned on the surface, add the red wine and allow it to fully reduce.
  • Then add the tomato paste and combine well. Then add the canned tomatoes, the chicken stock, and bay leaf, then cook for 40 minutes until it is reduced by half, mixing occasionally.
  • Once it has reduced by half, season with salt, pepper and sugar.

For the dumplings:

  • Place the shiratamako flour into a bowl, and mix in the parmesan cheese and salt & pepper.
  • Gradually drizzle in the water, and knead with a spoon (or your hands – much easier). The dough should form into one piece, and be firm enough for a piece of dough to be rolled into a ball, and retain its form when placed down. Depending on the humidity of your house and the moisture in the cheese, you may need to add more flour, but do so gradually.
  • Divide the dough into about 48 pieces, and roll into balls. Take 3 balls, and knead them together with the food colouring to create a blue, green and brown ball. Take a small amount of dough from the blue or green dough, flatten it into a disk, and stick it onto one of the white balls. Then take an even smaller amount of brown dough, and stick it on top to make the pupil. Repeat with the remaining eyeballs.
  • Place the dumplings in a pot of salted, boiling water. Once they have risen to the surface, boil for 1 minute, then place them into the pot with the meat sauce. Gently mix together, and serve!

Video