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).

Meatballs IX

I acquired a new cookbook:



and when Dave asked, "Is it time for more meatballs?" I looked in my new cookbook and found a recipe for lamb meatballs. Unlike all the previous recipes where the meatballs are browned in oil in a pan on the stovetop, this recipe instructs you to cook the meatballs spread out on a parchment-lined baking sheet in the oven. Mixed in with the ground lamb was sauteed chopped shallots, garlic & zucchini, as well as fresh chopped mint and (this is the ingredient that makes the dish) preserved lemons. I had made a big jar of lemons preserved in lemon juice and salt years ago, and it was one of the best thing I ever did. It keeps in the fridge forever and I use it in stews, salads, and recipes such as this one requiring unusual ingredients. Dave liked the meatballs, he said it had good meat flavor. I also made a garlic-yoghurt mix to go with the meatballs, and side dishes of brussel sprouts and sauteed cabbage. The wine was a Cline Small Berry Mouvedre that we had acquired on a recent trip to Sonoma county. It was delicious, but we decided to let the rest of the bottles age for a few more years to bring out the complexity in the wine.



Dessert was an apple galette, paired with a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc from Dry Creek Vineyard. I had a nice time sipping it while sight-reading Jerome Kern on the piano. I sight read much better with a glass of wine! It was a nice end to a long Memorial Day weekend.

Meatballs VIII

Here's a recipe that seemed unlikely, but turned out to be one of those things whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's from one of Marcella Hazan's cookbooks:



The recipe for "Pork balls with beans and tomatoes" instruct you to serve the dish with polenta, which seems a little strange, considering that there was already plenty of starch in the form of cranberry beans (I used navy beans instead) in the meatball stew. But, I do love polenta (perhaps because I love grits from having gone to school in the south) so I did as instructed. The other change I made was to add some beet greens I had been saving (the beetroots had been roasted and eaten a few days earlier) to the stew for the last 15 minutes of cooking. Wow! The combination of the meatball stew, the greens, and the polenta was hearty and satisfying. Dave said that the beet greens were the best part, because they had picked up all the flavors of the meatball stew.



The wine was made from Lagrein grapes from Jacuzzi in Sonoma. It was very purple and hearty, perfect for the meal.

Cute top

This cute top (#129) from the February 2009 Burda magazine has been reviewed favorably by many people and I suddenly had a desire to wear it to dinner this last Saturday:



So at about noon the same Saturday I wanted to wear it, I started tracing the pattern and got the fabric cut out and partly sewn, but of course I did not make it in time for dinner. What was I thinking!

I finally finished it some time this week. I love it in black-and-white print I finally decided on, which had been in my stash for a long time. I don't think the actual fabric, a cotton blend with a slight stretch, was a great choice, being a little stiff. Dave likes the top too, mostly because he likes black-and-white abstract prints on me.



The pendant on the necklace I am wearing is a likeness of a yeast zygote. See, I'm not just a domestic scientist, I am a real scientist who did yeast genetics many years ago. When yeast mate, they form this distinctive structure called a zygote. Here's a picture of a real yeast zygote, and below it, a close-up of my necklace.





I like the top a lot, so much so that I went out and bought some nice silk in a silvery color to make the same top to wear for fancier occasions. I think the pattern would work better in a softer, drapier fabric. The cotton blend I used is a bit stiff, and I also interfaced the bands, which is a bad idea. The stiffness causes the top to sort of poof out under my bust, which is precisely where you don't want your clothes to poof out!

Meatballs VII

After all the exotic meatballs I'd been making, I decided to go back to basics and consulted this cookbook, the most-used of my half-dozen or so Spanish cuisine cookbooks:



There are no fewer than nine meatball recipes in this book alone. I chose the one that appeared in the "Tapas" section. You can't get more basic than that!

Meatballs in Almond, Garlic and Parsley Sauce:



As you can see, Huxley Beagle thinks that the meatballs smell delicious! He didn't get to have any, though. A friend of mine who is a fan of my cooking once said that it must be torture for Huxley Beagle to have to live with all the cooking smells and not get to eat the food! He did get to lick the sauce off our plates and he did such a good job he must have thought it was delicious!

Meatballs VI

Maghrebi Veal Meatballs with Spinach and Chickpeas is from another excellent cookbook that I have lately been sadly neglecting:



The dish is more like a stew containing meatballs cooked with spinach and chickpeas. I used a mixture of beef and pork instead of veal for the meatballs, which were flavored with a complex Tunisian spice mix containing paprika, coriander seed, caraway seed, anise, cumin, cloves, turmeric, black pepper and cayenne.



It was very delicious and went particularly well with the Pinot Noir from Mendocino County that some nice friends had left at our house (Thanks, Beth and Tim!) A great hearty one-pot meal to make on a cold weeknight; all you need to complete the meal is some nice wine to drink with it!