Amongst the rolling hills of Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley, Harkham Winery has been producing wine for nearly 20 years. This small, family-run affair still uses traditional techniques - including hand-picking the fruit - to craft wines with minimal intervention.

The vineyard's newly opened restaurant is emblematic of the Harkham way, a discerning yet warm space that serves elegant twists on hearty favourites. Here, head chef Shaun Nash shares his recipes for traditional meatballs, which you'll find on the winery's evergreen menu.

Ingredients

300g sourdough (or your bread of choice)
400ml full cream milk
100ml cooking oil + extra for cooking meatballs
1 large brown onion, diced
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp red chilli, finely chopped
30g butter
1kg beef mince
200g veal mince (or pork mince)
100g grated parmesan
50g Italian parsley, roughly chopped
4 egg yolks

Makes around 25 – 35 meatballs

Method

1. Preheat oven on fan force at 210 degrees Celsius.

2. Start by roughly cutting/ripping the bread up into smaller chunks and soaking it in mil. After it has soaked for 10 minutes, crush the bread up to form a milky paste (you can do this with gloves, a ball whisk or even a potato masher).

3. In a pot on medium heat, heat oil and then add diced brown onion. Once the onion has softened, add the garlic, chilli and butter and cook until the brown onion has caramelized. Take off heat and allow to cool.

4. In a large bowl, add the beef and veal both mince, parmesan, bread mix, onion mixture, parsley and egg yolks. Mix until well combined and form meatballs (we roll our meatballs to 70g however make them the size you prefer).

5. Once your meatballs are all rolled, put a large frying pan on high heat with some olive oil. In batches that don't overcrowd the pan, seal the meatballs by creating a crust. Once sealed, place the meatballs on an oil-coated baking tray and bake at 210 degrees for 7 minutes (this is for the 70g meatballs; increase or decrease the cooking time if you made larger or smaller meatballs).

6. Once cooked, the meatballs are ready to be added to any sauce or pasta you choose (however, these don’t need sauce to taste amazing; they’re great straight from the oven!). At Harkham I use these as an entrée dish served with a simple Napoli sauce as well as on our meatball pizza.

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