Ikea meatballs hack

I found out that there's a group of Ikea hackers out there, who takes pride and pleasure in refurbishing or personalising their Ikea furniture. Like reupholstering their tired sofa with designer fabric, or reconfiguring a LACK shelving unit into a bench.

Now there's no Ikea in New Zealand to turn me into another Ikea hack, but I have half a dozen Ikea's cheapo pine photo frames bought from Singapore, those that has filmsy cardboard backing such that they won't stand properly. So I was inspired by the hackers' DIY spirit to modify my photo frames into something like what you see on the right. Just as in cooking when I try to use as few utensils as possible to reduce washing, my reborn photo frames minimises the number of hooks used. That's important, since staying in a rented apartment restricts your freedom in hammering hooks onto the wall.

Besides modifying Ikea products, I also managed to 'hack' the famous Ikea meatball recipe. Or rather, improvised it according to whatever ingredients my fridge was able to cough out, plus incorporating ideas from other Swedish meatball recipes.

Of course, Swedish meatballs would not be complete without the all important lingonberry jam. Similarly, my jar of lingonberry jam given with love by my bro and carried with due care by yours truly all the way from Sweden would never be satisfied until I eat them with the meatballs.

Ikea meatballs hack
Serves two

After buying only minced beef, I found out that Swedish meatballs actually uses a mixture of beef and pork, and the proportion of beef to pork varies from region to region. As for amount of meat used, I reckoned each person shall have about 10 meatballs, hence apportioning 20 heap teaspoons of minced meat.
1 onion, chopped finely
about 5 tablespoons of breadcrumbs
enough milk for soaking the breadcrumbs so it just covers
about 1 tablespoon chopped parsley (I like to jump at all opportunities to pluck parsley from my pot of herbs)
1 egg to bind everything together
salt and black pepper for seasoning
Butter for frying

For the cream sauce:
about 50ml cream, don't have to be precise about exactly how much. same with stock
about 100ml chicken stock (or beef stock) - made quickly with ready stock cube
1 teaspoon corn starch or flour to thicken
salt and pepper to season

Soak breadcrumbs in milk so it softens.

Heat a little butter and stir fry the onions until soften but not brown. Mix all ingredients for meatballs together.

Using your hands or 2 spoons, shape the meat mixture into balls about the size of a ping pong.

Heat some more butter. Fry the meatlballs in batches if necessary until cooked on all sides.

Prepare the sauce by boiling the stock. Add cream, thicken with the flour and season to taste.

Serve meatballs with the cream sauce, uncooked lingonberry jam and a salad (or boiled vegetables like what I did). It seems Common traditional to serve with potatoes (mashed, baked or fried) but I have no potatoes. What the heck.