Chick­en Meat­balls with Pojars­ki Sauce

Chick­en Meatl­balls in Pojars­ki Sauce

(serves 8)

for the meatballs:

about 2 lbs/1 kg  chick­en breasts (about 8 small half-breasts), bone­less and skinless

about 1 1/2 cups/350 ml milk

about 1 1/2 cup/80g Panko breadcrumbs

1 tbsp Fox Point (or oth­er savory) seasoning

good grind fresh black pepper

for the sauce:

3 tbsps butter

1 tbsp flour (more lat­er if need­ed to thick­en sauce)

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 shal­lot, minced

1 1/2 tbsp paprika

as much fresh thyme leaves as you like

about 1/3 cup/90ml brandy

1 cup/275ml chick­en stock

1 cup/275 ml sour cream (half-fat yields best results)

good grind fresh black pepper

The mea­sure­ments for the meat­balls are vari­able by the size of the chick­en fil­lets and by how “wet” you like your meat­ball mix.  I like to get the mix as wet as pos­si­ble but still able to be formed into balls.  Trim the chick­en breasts com­plete­ly of any fat, gris­tle, ten­dons.  They must be supreme­ly per­fect for this dish.  Now place them in your Mag­im­ix or Cuisi­nart and pulse care­ful­ly until the chick­en is fine­ly minced.  Not mushy, but fine­ly chopped.

Mix the milk, bread­crumbs and sea­son­ings in a medi­um bowl, then add the chick­en.  With clean hands, squish togeth­er all these ingre­di­ents until you can see that the chick­en is thor­ough­ly mixed with the bread­crumbs and the sea­son­ings are well-dis­trib­uted.  The mix­ture should be as wet as you can rea­son­ably han­dle.  Add more milk if nec­es­sary to achieve this very frag­ile, wet mix­ture.  Set mix­ture aside.

Now make the sauce, because you will poach the meat­balls in it.  In a large (at least 12 inch­es) shal­low fry­ing pan or pael­la pan, melt the but­ter, add the flour and cook, stir­ring con­stant­ly, for a minute.  Then add the gar­lic and shal­lots and saute until soft.  Sprin­kle on the papri­ka and fresh thyme and cook for a minute or so.  Deglaze the pan with the brandy and cook for two min­utes rather high, stir­ring as the brandy evap­o­rates.  Add the chick­en stock and sour cream and begin stir­ring with a wire whisk.  Sim­mer and sea­son with black pep­per to taste.  Be care­ful of the sea­son­ing as this sauce (and the meat­balls) can be decep­tive­ly salty depend­ing on the sea­son­ings with the chick­en and the fla­vors of the stock.

When the sauce is thor­ough­ly mixed and hot, care­ful­ly make meat­balls the size of golf­balls and drop them gen­tly into the sim­mer­ing sauce.  Try to main­tain a sin­gle lay­er, but if you can­not, poach the first lay­er for sev­er­al min­utes until the meat­balls can be moved care­ful­ly, then fit in the extra meat­balls.  Poach at a low sim­mer for about five min­utes, then turn each meat­ball care­ful­ly, coat­ing them in the sauce. Poach a fur­ther five min­utes.  Taste to make sure chick­en is thor­ough­ly cooked.  At this point you may take the pan off the heat and leave it for the fla­vors to devel­op.  Heat through when you are ready to eat.  Serve with noodles.