We're Back, with Meatballs

First things first: it's been an embarrassingly long time since my last post. But, just when I was starting to get really annoyed that things like exams and studying were taking up my precious maniacal blogging time, I realized that I was done with all of that. At least for a few days. Seven semesters down, one to go. Then it's going to be maniacal blogging time whenever I want it to be!

That said, you'll be happy to know that the last few weeks weren't entirely devoted to studying. We took some breaks to make some rather delicious meals, and even hosted a wee dinner gathering on Monday evening. More on that later.

For now, I want to make up for my recent blogligence with a wonderfully hearty and delicious meatball stew. I've never been much of a traditional Italian meatball person, but I've recently become interested in the meatball-like foods of other Mediterranean regions. Interestingly enough, almost every culture has some version of the meatball: kibbe, kofta, albondigas....all with names significantly more appealing than "meatball."

My meatball dish is Mediterranean-ish in terms of flavor, but its real roots are my mother's recipe for sweet and sour meatballs, a dish she'd make once in a while using ground turkey instead of beef. In some sense I hate to say that they were delicious, because the two main ingredients in the "sweet and sour" part of the meatballs were ginger ale and ketchup. I know, it sounds....not delicious. But trust me, it was. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be caught dead cooking with ginger ale and ketchup, so I've updated, improvised, and yuppified the recipe a bit. Ok, a lot. It's still turkey, still sweet and sour, and instead of being served over white rice, this version was accompanied by some quinoa. Brown rice or cous cous would also work very well. Also, I thought about calling this dish "Meatballs Agrodulce." Too much? I thought so, too.


About the recipe: it seems long, but let's face it - every meatball recipe involves the same basic steps. I think it helps to chill the meat mixture before rolling it into balls, but proceed as time permits. I call for "cooked grain" in the meat mixture, which could be anything from pre-soaked bulgur to cooked brown rice to plain old bread crumbs. The grain helps to add some substance and soak up some of the liquid from the meat and onion. Finally, it's important to really caramelize the onions for the sauce. Doing so makes them nice and sweet, and this is sweet and sour meatball stew, after all. To get the sour, I use balsamic vinegar, which you should add according to your tastes. Oh, and did I mention that this recipe is absolutely perfect on a chilly winter night?


Here's the recipe; be grateful that you can get all of the deliciousness of sweet and sour meatballs without all of that ginger ale.

Sweet and Sour Turkey Meatballs, Yuppy Style

For the meatballs:
1 lb. ground turkey
1 egg
1/4 c. cooked grain, bulgur, or breadcrumbs
1/2 onion, diced (as small as you can!)
2 cloves garlic, pressed
5-6 prunes, soaked and chopped
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. cumin
pinch nutmeg
1/2 tsp. all-purpose or Italian seasoning
1/2-1 tsp. salt
pepper to taste

Soak prunes (there are more prunes in the sauce, so soak those, too) in hot water for about 30min., until plump and soft, and then chop. Mix all ingredients thoroughly - don't be afraid to use your hands! If you have time, set aside to chill for a few hours. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Form meat mixture into 1-in. diameter balls, wetting your hands to avoid sticking. Place meatballs on a lightly greased and foiled baking sheet and bake for 15-20 min., until starting to brown and completely cooked through.

For the sauce:
1 tbs. olive oil
1 1/2 onions, sliced
2 garlic cloves, pressed
1 large can chopped tomatoes, with about half of the juice
10 prunes, chopped
1 carrot, diced
3 tbs. (or to taste) balsamic vinegar
Seasonings to taste: cinnamon, paprika, ground ginger, cumin, turmeric, salt, and pepper
cooked meatballs

Heat olive oil in a pot, and then add onions. Caramelize the onions. This should take about 15 min. of cooking. Watch the onions, stirring occasionally, to make sure that they are browning but not burning. Once they are nicely browned, add garlic, and saute for a minute or so. Season with salt, pepper, and spices. Add carrot and cook until slightly softened. Add prunes, and then add tomatoes with some juice. Season with balsamic vinegar and adjust the spices. Cook until thickened, and then add the meatballs. Cook for a few minutes more to heat the meatballs and reduce the sauce to your liking. Serve over rice, brown rice, quinoa, or cous cous.

Avgolemonissimo

I know what you're thinking - yet another soup. We basically subsist completely on soup at this point, given the fresh chill in the air and the infinite possibilities of warm, liquid deliciousness. I was planning to post about some other culinary adventures that we've taken recently, but this avgolemono soup that we made tonight was so incredibly delicious that I couldn't wait to share the recipe. Jonathan exclaimed, after polishing off a heartily-sized bowl: "I think that might have been the best soup I've ever had." The picture above was a success in terms of photography, but to be honest, this isn't the most beautiful thing you'll ever eat. Whether it is the most delicious, though, only you can decide.

The soup - avgolemono - is a classic Greek soup made with rice, eggs, and lemon; although we've added some odds and ends to make it a bit healthier and heartier. The recipe below could probably serve 4, but we had it on its own for dinner and were only left with one wee bowl's worth of leftovers. You could serve it with nice crusty bread or a green salad, but, if you don't feel like the extra work, it's fine and complete on its own. Despite wishing I had homemade stock on hand, we used Whole Foods brand and were quite pleased with the results. Without further ado:

Avgolemonissimo (Greek Egg-Lemon Soup With a Twist)

6 c. chicken stock
1/2 c. uncooked brown rice
1 split, boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 egg
3 tbs. freshly-squeezed lemon juice
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped coarsely
1 c. finely chopped chard or spinach
2 green onions, chopped
generous freshly-ground black pepper

Bring stock almost to a boil in a large pot. When it is barely boiling, add rice, garlic, carrot, white parts of green onions (save the green parts for garnishing), and whole chicken breast. Cover and simmer over low-medium heat for about 20 min., or until chicken is cooked through. Once chicken is completely cooked, remove from soup and shred with a fork to get bite-sized pieces. Return to soup and continue simmering until rice is soft, about 20 min. more. Meanwhile, beat egg with freshly-squeezed lemon juice until blended. When rice is done, ladle a bit of hot soup into egg mixture and whisk vigorously to temper the egg. Don't let the egg scramble. After whisking for a few seconds, add egg to soup, and whisk some more to avoid scrambling. Continue to cook over low heat (don't let the soup boil) for a few more minutes, just until the soup is thickened. Add chopped chard and stir to wilt. Ladle into deep bowls and garnish with green onion.

Stew's On, Too

Just about as soon as I finished singing the praises of hearty soups, another recipe idea popped into my head - this one was a stew. If soup is the perfect thing to warm you up on a chilly fall night, then there is simply no word to describe the ecstasies of stew. Like soup, but heartier, chunkier, and unabashed in its ability to showcase the variety of tastes and textures it contains.

The stew we came up with tonight featured chicken, beans, and white yams - a variety I had never tried before, but which proved to be quite delicious. It was a Friday night of cooking and experimenting; we were working on a few new, more complicated recipes, and the stew was our quick and easy dinner. It also turned out to be the star of the evening, as it were. This recipe was inspired by a dish I had in Argentina, which consisted of brown lentils, stew meat, bacon, and batatas - a South American sweet potato varietal. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is not my typical dish. I'm not exactly a "bacon" kind of girl. So, while this dish was tasty enough to inspire this recipe, most will not be surprised to find that I use the term "inspire" quite loosely here. No bacon. Sorry.

As it turns out, this dish is really not at all like the lentil stew I ate in South America, but it is indeed delicious. I used a host of canned ingredients, but if you are feeling inspired, you can do everything fresh (though it is largely unnecessary, in my opinion). I do maintain, however, that roasting the pepper and yam before adding them to the stew is essential; it provides a smoky, deep flavor that can't be achieved by sauteing. The most time-consuming step is boiling the chicken, which we did in a separate pot of water instead of in the stew base itself. I chose this method so that I could boil the chicken breast skin-on and bone-in, and so that I could shred the chicken before adding it to the stew. I prefer the texture of the shredded chicken to big chunks of chicken, and I think it makes for moister, more tender meat. The added bonus, of course, is the big Tupperware of homemade chicken soup now sitting in the freezer; instead of a lonely chicken-only boil, we added some carrots, parsnips, celery, onion, and parsley to the water. We also added a few cupfuls of this stock to the stew, which gave it a lovely rich flavor.

If we hadn't been making a million other things this evening, we most certainly would have whipped up a batch of homemade skillet cornbread to accompany the stew. The two would make such a perfect match that we may just pull out the old skillet tomorrow to make a batch to go with the leftovers (which are abundant). Rice or corn tortillas would also be nice on the side. Here's the recipe:

Roasted Sweet Potato and Chicken Stew

1 whole bone-in, skin-on chicken breast
1 large white yam, garnet yam, or sweet potato
1 15-oz. can pinto beans (undrained)
1 15-oz. can fire-roasted diced tomatoes (try Muir Glen brand)
1 red pepper, roasted and peeled
1 c. fresh, frozen, or canned corn kernels
1 small can green chilies
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbs. olive oil
seasonings to taste: salt, pepper, cumin, adobo, chili powder, etc.

Chop the chicken breast in half, leaving skin on and bones in. Boil in salted, seasoned water until cooked through, about 20 min. Remove from pot (reserve cooking liquid), remove the skin, and shred off the bone with a fork. Meanwhile, roast the yam and the red pepper. Peel and dice the yam (1/2 in. dice). In a foil-lined roasting pan, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper, chili powder, and cumin. Roast in the oven for half an hour or so, until the yam is golden and tender. Roast the pepper over the flame of a gas burner, or under a broiler until skin is charred. Let cool, peel off the charred skin, and dice the now naked pepper. Now start the stew: heat olive oil in a heavy saucepan, then add onions and garlic. Saute until softened. Add tomatoes, beans, corn, and green chilies. Bring almost to a boil, and then add chicken, diced pepper, and roasted sweet potatoes. Add chicken stock as necessary so that there is enough liquid to cover. Season stew. Cover pan and let simmer until everything is hot and flavors have blended, about 10-15 min. Serve in wide bowls with cornbread, rice, or tortillas.

All the Fixins

On Saturday night, overcome by a false nostalgia for some down-home cooking, I decided to make a "traditional" American meal. I say "false" nostalgia, because my family was never the meat-and-potatoes type. A normal meal at 7 Kings Pine Rd. in Westford, Massachusetts, usually took the form of a Chinese-inspired stir fry with bok choy and soba noodles, turmeric-infused rice with daal and chickpeas, or ubiquitous rice and beans (my favorite!).

For the most part, I have inherited my mother's inclination towards ethnic culinary experimentation, and keep the nearest pantry stocked with garbanzos, tofu, garam masala, cumin, plain yogurt, miso, and hot paprika. A former pesco-vegetarian, I am relatively apprehensive about preparing meat and tend to mix and match various vegetable dishes, soups, and mezze when serving a meal.

On Saturday, though, I was inspired to go completely New England-traditional. Ok, so I added a hefty sprinkling of cayenne to my pumpkin soup. And curry. And cumin. But for the most part, my meal was tame: salad with granny smith apple vinaigrette and walnuts, (spicy curried) pumpkin soup, and lemon-herb roasted chicken breast with potatoes and homemade stuffing. I will admit the potential for having been influenced by reading the latest issue of Bon Appetit (it was the Thanksgiving issue).

In particular, the magazine inspired my chicken: we purchased an entire skin-on, bones-in chicken breast, which afforded me the opportunity to mix some fresh herbs in some butter and rub it between the skin and the breast meat. I then slipped about 10 or so thin slices of lemon under the skin, and sprinkled the outside with some kosher salt and pepper. That was it. No stuffing the cavity, no kitchen twine, no giblets. I just popped that baby in a roasting pan alongside some quartered, oiled, and seasoned potatoes and some of the stuffing I had prepared (in copious amounts).

Speaking of the stuffing: I had originally intended to do an easy wild rice stuffing, which requires no bread. Upon returning from Whole Foods, however, I found half of a stale loaf of rustic whole wheat bread, ripe for cubing. And so it was that I reserved the wild rice for the pumpkin soup, cubed the bread, toasted it in the oven until dry, and then mixed it with the other stuffing ingredients:

Olive oil/butter
Carrots
Onion
Celery
Mushrooms
Dried cranberries
White wine
Chicken broth
Sage, salt, pepper, etc.

I haven't included measurements in this pseudo-recipe, but as long as you mix the above in rationally-devised proportions, you will come up with something delicious. As I mentioned before, some of the stuffing got prime seating next to the chicken breast, and the rest was baked in a separate pan. Simple, not outrageously unhealthy, completely delicious. Take a look:




I also mentioned a pumpkin soup with wild rice. It was quite tasty, incredibly easy, and beautiful, but I will withhold the recipe until I get the seasonings just right. This time around I think I may have overdone it with the cayenne. Stay tuned, but for now, a visual offering:




It should be noted that the morning following this hyper-American feast, I was visited by the insane notion of making a leftovers omelette. We had a few potatoes and a hefty helping of stuffing left, and I made an omelette for two using 4 eggs, a large frying pan, and an utter disregard for visual appeal. It may not have been pretty, but Jonathan and I agreed that it was one of the best omelettes we had ever eaten. Served with generous amounts of organic ketchup, of course. Why does ketchup make everything taste better? (This is not rhetorical, please post a response in the comments section, if you are so inclined.)