rissoles

I remember when I was about 9, my dad exhorting me to come into the kitchen to watch him make rissoles.  Dad and mum had a pretty large mortgage which they were desperately trying to pay off before I reached high school (private school fees are a bitch), so mince featured regularly in our diets, in different guises.  We used to eat a lot of spaghetti bolognese, shepherds’ pie, rissoles - you name the mince dish, we ate it.

Anyhow, Dad was saying to me, ‘Come and watch how I make rissoles – you’ll thank me when you’re older and you have a mortgage and you have to eat’.  I don’t actually remember watching him, but I would’ve, being a reasonably dutiful daughter.  I do remember thinking there was no way in hell I could imagine mixing up raw mince and raw egg together with my hands.  Yuck!

Anyhow, some twenty-odd years later, this story cuts to last night at the dinner table.  SO had made a beautiful dinner of fish and vegies, and we were talking about eating healthier.  I mentioned I was thinking of cooking roast beef for tonight’s dinner, but SO wasn’t enthusiastic.  I sighed (he is a picky eater) and asked him what he wanted instead.  He mulled it over for a few seconds, then his eyes lit up.  ‘I know! I want rissoles.  And gravy.’  He smiled at me delightedly.

So here I am, looking up rissole recipes, and resigning myself to the idea of my hands in a mix of raw mince and raw egg.  Yuck.  Most of the recipes I’ve found are pretty simple – mince, raw egg, onion, breadcrumbs.  I know SO’s stepmum’s rissoles (which he adores) are more involved than this, so I kept looking.  I finally found this recipe, which sounds more like the rissoles my Dad used to make.  He used to chuck in any vegetable that could be finely chopped.  So yes, I’ll give it a bash tonight.  Rissoles with gravy, and steamed vegies.  Stay tuned for a review of how it all went.