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?!!