Meatballs XIV - Portuguese meatballs

This is a catch-up post - about a meal I made a few months ago, but it was a meal made in preparation for our Portuguese vacation, so it seems to fit in with the last post. I ordered this cookbook to prepare for our culinary adventures in Portugal:



And, of course, since I was still on a mission to make as many types of meatballs as I could, the recipe for Portuguese meatballs caught my eye. They are supposed to be made from ground lamb, but I didn't have any around in my freezer and so I used ground beef, which was flavored with ginger, orange zest, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, black pepper and chopped fresh cilantro. The browned meatballs are then simmered in a wine and broth sauce flavored with the same spices that were in the ground meat mixture, and finished off with more fresh chopped cilantro. As a side, I made spinach with toasted bread crumbs (also from the same cookbook), one of the best spinach sides I've ever tasted!



I have to say, we didn't have any meatballs in Lisbon or Porto and the meatballs we had in Madeira weren't at all like what I made (but then lots of dishes that we did try had different interpretations in Madeira), but it is a delicious dish all the same!

I'm back again, this time after vacation

I knew I said I was back, and then disappeared for another 3 weeks. This is because we'd been spending the first two weeks of November on vacation - in Portugal!

Huxley Beagle got boarded for two weeks at a dog daycare/boarding place. Within the first 5 days, he got bitten by a German Shepherd dog that he was attempting to hump. What an ambitious beagle! - or maybe the German Shepherd was just really hot! Anyway, the folks at the daycare took care of him and he got all his stitches out the day we came back. Since then, he's been EXTRA affectionate and clingy. I think he's afraid we will leave him again! Anyway, I think he had fun despite his misadventure. Here are some pictures of him "on vacation":


Dressed up as a bunny on Halloween (what humiliation!)







I made a corduroy pea coat for the mild November weather in Lisbon and Porto, where we spent about 5 days each. (Will post about the pea coat in a bit.) We spent the last 4 days of our Portuguese vacation in Madeira, where it was very warm and pleasant. Why Portugal, and those particular places in Portugal, you ask? Well, we always like to take vacations in places where we can learn about a new cuisine or wines. Last year, we enjoyed visiting sherry bodegas in Andalusia so much and learning about the different kinds of sherries and how they were made that we decided to visit Porto to learn about Port wine and Madeira to learn about Madeira wine. And how can you visit Portugal without visiting Lisbon! Of course, we also had lots of chances everywhere to sample the dizzying array of Portuguese table wines made from all sorts of interesting grape varietals that we had never heard of. And, the best part was all the food we got to eat! One thing we learnt - Portuguese portions are HUGE! You will see this shortly from pictures we took of almost every meal. We are on a sort of exercise regimen now, to try to lose all that weight we gained. Not that it wasn't a strenuous vacation - Portugal (including Madeira) is a very hilly country and we took some steep hikes that were really good workouts.

Anyway, I will be posting about Portuguese food and wine shortly, as well as some sewing topics related to our vacation. Stay tuned!



The red balloon marks the location of Madeira.

Metaballs XIII - Turkish meatballs with eggplant puree

This is a most unusual, and delicious!, recipe from this cookbook



It's sort of like meatballs cooked in baba ghanoush!

The meatballs are made from a mixture of ground beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, allspice, cumin and black pepper, and are first browned in oil and then cooked in an eggplant sauce, prepared as follows. The eggplants are first roasted/grilled over the stove top gas burner until the skin blisters and blackens and the flesh is soft. The skin is removed and the flesh, which has become pleasingly smokey, is mashed up. Sliced onions from a large onion are sauteed until golden and soft, and then the mashed eggplant and a bit of tomato paste is added. The browned meatballs are simmered in this mixture.



I made some tabbouleh (from the same cookbook) to go along with it and served everything with some pita bread. This was a good recipe! - I might have to make it again soon!

Meatballs XII - Indian meatballs/koftas

These meatballs are different from your regular meatballs not just because the ground meat has a lot of spices mixed in, but mostly because they are also stuffed with an aromatic mixture of green chillies, garlic, ginger, scallions, lemon juice and salt and pepper. The stuffed meatballs are then browned with yet more spices (cinnamon, cardamom...) and then cooked in a tomato-based sauce with yet more spices. It was really quite delicious, served over rice boiled with a bit of butter and salt to soak up the sauce. Here is a picture of it



The recipe is from the oldest cookbook I own. I bought it in 1992 or so, when I moved out of grad school dorm into an actual apartment where I'd have to cook my own meals instead of eating in the dining halls. I still remember that I bought this cookbook because my good friend Melissa owned it and had invited Dave and I over for dinner at her apartment, where she cooked the "Chicken with tomato sauce and butter" recipe. It was so good it made an impression on me! - and I bought the cookbook as soon as I had a kitchen of my own.

I'm back

Well, it's been a really long time since I posted anything. The job sort of got in the way, and then when I had free time it seemed more fun to spend the precious time actually really cooking and sewing than to blog about these activities. I have been actually sewing a lot, a whole summer's wardrobe really, because it has been unseasonably warm in San Francisco and I didn't have anything appropriate for warm weather! And I have been working my way through the meatballs theme, and taking pictures, so there is a lot of meatballs posts for me to catch up with!

So here we go, a meatballs extravaganza...

And here is a picture of Huxley, just because. Isn't he just the cutest, little wudgy doggy?!!

Meatballs XI

Meatballs three days in a row!!! We had meatballs again last night. OK, maybe tonight I will make something else. I saw a most unusual meatball recipe using peaches and knew I had to make it. It was from this cookbook



The meat mixture was pretty standard, containing breadcrumbs, parsley, onions and garlic, but it was the sauce that absolutely transformed this dish! The browned meatballs were simmered in this sauce made from caramelized sugar, butter, browned pears, sherry vinegar, broth, cinnamon and toasted pine nuts. It was like a really, really amazing rendition of familiar sweet-and-sour flavors. I also made a standard Spanish side of spinach with pine nuts and raisins. The wine was an Albarino from Spain, which turned out to be a little too delicate to stand up to the robust flavors of the meatball sauce. Perhaps a heavier white, like a slightly oakey Viognier would have been a better match. I offered the remains of an apple gallete to Dave, but he said he didn't need dessert because the peaches in the sweet sauce was dessert-y enough!

Meatballs X

I finally cooked out of a cookbook I'd owned forever and never used.



Earlier, I had passed up on the meatball recipe in there before because the meatballs are poached, and I thought, boiled meatballs can't be any good! However, after meatballs IX, which were roasted in an oven, I became more open to new ways of cooking meatballs so I decided to give these ones a try. Besides, the meatballs are poached in broth, which can't be all that bad!

The beef mixture was flavored with parsley, cloves and nutmeg, and the meatballs were poached very slowly, the recipe instructing you to keep the broth simmering "at a tremble". Wow! They came out really light, almost like dumplings! They were served with horseradish sauce and some more of the cabbage from our previous meal the day before (meatballs IX - yes, we had meatballs two days in a row).