MEATBALLS AND CHIPS (Köfte Patates)

This is comfort food. Most kids love eating meatballs and chips so this meal is reminiscent of childhood memories. If you have the ingredients at home, it's not even a big deal to prepare. If you want to linger a bit more in the past, you may as well eat an ice cream on top.

Ingredients:

• 400 g minced beef
• 1 onion
• Parsley, half pack
• 3 slices of stale bread (without the crust)
• 1 egg yolk
• Blackpepper, half teaspoon
• Red pepper flakes (or paprika), half teaspoon
• Salt, half teaspoon
• Frying oil

For chips:

• Potatoes (medium, cooking potatoes suit better)
• Frying oil

Preparation:

• In a bowl add meat, finely diced onion, chopped parsley, crumbled bread, egg yolk, salt and the spices.
• Start kneading and mixing with your hand by both squeezing and pressing the ingredients until everything comes together and mixed well. The egg yolk served as a paste but we need to make sure that it is evenly distributed so continue mixing roughly about 10 minutes.
• From the doughy meat mixture, grab walnut sized (or bigger, as you like) pieces, tap in your palm and give an oval shape. If you make it too chubby, it might stay rare. So oval shape helps it to be fully cooked.
• Align the individual meatballs on a wide plate, cover with clingfilm and leave them to rest in the fridge for 1-2 hours. (You may skip this step and fry them right away but having them rested in the cold gives better results.)
• In the mean time, peel the potatoes and cut them in round slices, not too thin, not too thick, about 1 cm wide. Then cut each slice in fingers. I'd better help you visualize :)

• Wrap all the slices in a tissue paper to get rid of the excess water (it causes oil to jump all over). 
• Heat up the oil in a pan.
• Drop one slice and wait till it gets brownish. Now the oil is ready for frying. Add the slices into the oil in bunches. Don't mix them, wait till they they become darker color on one side, then you can mix them and turn the other sides. Take them out onto a tissue paper and sprinkle salt.
• When you finish frying the potatoes, you can use the same oil for meatballs. Because meatballs make the oil a bit messy, it is always better to fry the potatoes first and then the meatballs. Fry the meatballs on each side for about 3-4 minutes.
• Enjoy your meal while it is hot!

Potato picture: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/galleries/food/fruitveg/index.htm