Small Kitchen Cooking: Meatballs Over Mashed Cauliflower with Mushrooms

So this whole meal could be done from scratch in a tiny kitchen, but it’s even easier if you simply assemble.

In our temporary apartment, I’ve had to skip all those delicious Trader Joe’s frozen food items since I don’t have a freezer.  It breaks my heart.  But last week I was making dinner right when I got home from the store.  That meant I could actually use some frozen items since I wouldn’t need to actually freeze them.

I started by warming up the mashed cauliflower in a saucepan.  Like I said, if you don’t buy this frozen, you could simply boil cauliflower and mash it with some garlic and stuff.  While that was heating up, I cooked some frozen meatballs in the microwave.  (Again, you could make meatballs from scratch but that would take significantly more time.)  Finally, I did the only bit of actual cooking and sauteed some sliced button mushrooms in a pan with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Once those looked good, I added jarred pasta sauce to the mushrooms to warm through.  I like this sauce to be heavy on the shrooms so you really see them when it’s plated.  Once everything is ready, ladle some mashed cauliflower on a plate, put the meatballs on top, cover with mushrooms and sauce, and top with fresh torn basil.

FYI: I used turkey meatballs instead of ground beef since I was using a creamy tomato basil sauce.  I felt like I had to even out the health scales a bit.  That said, because I PACKED this sauce with mushrooms, I used very little actual sauce.  And even though the mash seems decadent, it’s simply cauliflower so this is a super healthy meal.  Meatballs are standard weeknight supper fare, but who says spaghetti has to be the other half of the equation?