All Zakynthians on the Saints Day – Agion Panton – always eat polpetes so the dradition dictates and they respect the tradition. Favorite dish and delicious! Why not taste them yourself.
Writes Sissy Nika – Journalist of Taste and Culture
Ingredients
For 4 people
1 kg minced-beef-meat
½ Bread loaf stale and soaked
8 cloves garlic coarsely chopped
2 small grated onions
1 Spoon filled mint
Little vinegar
Salt
Pepper
Parsley finely chopped
2 eggs
Ladotyri Cheese from Zakynthos grated with our hands
Little oregano
Little olive oil
For the Sauce
1 onion finely chopped
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbsp. tomato paste
Salt
Pepper
Little olive oil
How to prepare
In a bowl, mix all the ingredients together.
We knead vigorously.
Put the minced meat in a bowl
Cover it with a transparent membrane and leave it in the refrigerator at least for 3 hours.
Remove the minced meat from the refrigerator and leave it for half an hour at room temperature.
We begin to knead the polpetes round, large and a little plaque.
We flour them and fry them in hot olive oil.
We turn them on both sides. Once they are ready, put them on a platter with absorbent paper for the excess oil to be absorbed.
At the same time, add some olive oil, a finely chopped onion and cinnamon in the pot. Once the onion is blanched, add the tomato paste that we dilute with some lukewarm water.
Let our sauce boil.
When is ready, we add our polpetes
We lower the temperature and shake our pot so the sauce sweeps the polpetes. We never mix.
When our sauce has thickened, our polpetes are ready.
Our polpetes are served with “hand-cut by mom” fried potatoes!
