Magdalena Chávez from El Piano, explains how to make the perfect meat-free 'meatballs'

We had a lot of fun last week at the York Festival of Food and Drink, surely one of the city's great annual draws. As El Piano has a cookery school in its courtyard in Grape Lane, we were lucky to be invited to run a full day of classes in the festival's cookery tent. Every class was full, and one of the dishes people really liked were our plant-based soya-free 'meatballs'. Here they are!

'Meatballs'

Get the sauce and the 'meatballs' going at the same time if you can. 

Heat two pans with scant olive oil and half a large diced onion in each pan.

The sauce pan needs to cook until the onions are golden. Then add a good tbsp tomato purée and actually fry the purée until it changes colour. Then add water to the desired thickness (some people like it thicker than others) plus salt and sugar to taste. Let it simmer slowly.

The 'meatball' mix onions don't need to be golden brown, just translucent. Add anise or fennel seeds, a tsp is enough. Now include a 500g margarine tub of soya mince, or in our case we used quinoa in order to not overuse soya. Stir it so it does not catch and the oil is absorbed. Put on tbsp tomato purée in a 500g margarine tub and top it up with water. Add to the pan, and another half of a margarine tub container of water. Let it cook slowly until the moisture is absorbed and the mince/quinoa is soft - about 20 minutes.

Mix in a chopped bunch of something green. We used parsley but basil is also great. 

The science is that the balls will be more moist as the green releases moisture into the balls as they bake and prevents them from being too dry.

Now add chick pea flour - but not too much - it should be wet to handle...but if you dampen your hands with water this will help prevent it sticking to them... Form balls and place on a silicon baking sheet. Into the oven, 20 minutes at medium to hot and presto, they are done. Serve topped with the sauce.

- Magdalena Chávez is the founder of El Piano in Grape Lane, an award winning wholly plant based and gluten-free eatery, winning the York cafe of the year award in 2012, finalist in 2013 and winner again in both 2014 and 2015. It uses no palm oil, solid mixed fats, nuts, except coconut, nor seeds, except sesame.