Recipe: Perfecto Meatballs

The poor meatball. So often relegated to childrens’ menus and questionable smorgasbords at discount furniture chains, the meatball is rarely given a real chance to shine. But we know the truth – that with the right ingredients and a little respect, meatballs can be complex, delicate, immensely satisfying and borderline elegant. 

Clearly, we are a family of meatball enthusiasts, from Middle Eastern kofta, heavy with green herbs and deep spices to dreamy Swedish köttbullar, smothered in peppery cream sauce. And, of course, there’s the classic Italian-American; three meats, breadcrumbs, and some parmesan, all rolled into a covetable package. Jake has perfected his version which, when sauteed in just enough butter (a lot), and finished off in a pan of saucy tomatoes, manages to couple a toothsome crust and a melt-in-your-mouth center. Poured over a bowl of bucatini or creamy polenta, this classic peasant dish will make you feel like well-fed royalty.

Perfecto Meatballs

Make the meatballs:
+ ½ cup milk
+ ½ cup bread crumbs
+ 2 eggs
+ 2 tbsp parmesan
+ ½ lb veal
+ ½ lb beef
+ ½ lb hot Italian pork sausage
+ 2 tbsp olive oil
+ 2 tbsp butter

1. Combine milk and bread crumbs in a small bowl until the all of the milk is absorbed.
2. In a large bowl, use your hands to mix the three meats with the eggs, parmesan, and bread and milk mixture. Make sure it is well blended but don’t over mix, as the meatballs will lose their fluffiness.
3. Place a large saute pan on high heat with the oil and butter.
4. Form the meat mixture into 1.5 – 2 inch rounds, and brown in small batches. Do not overcrowd pan.
5. Brown meatballs until they have a deep brown crusty exterior, a couple minutes on each side. One whole batch should take about 5-7 minutes – the balls don’t need to be 100 percent cooked at this point. When done, put meatballs aside.

Make the sauce:
+ (2) 28 oz. cans of whole peeled tomatoes
+ 2 medium yellow onions, chopped
+ 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

1. Using the drippings from the meatballs, saute the onions and garlic in the same pan until translucent, about 5 minutes.
2. Add tomatoes, roughly crushing each tomato with your hand or a large wooden spoon.
3. Bring sauce to a boil and then turn the heat down to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Add the meatballs back into the sauce and cook for another 15 minutes.
5. Pour over pasta or polenta and serve with some grated parmesan and pepper.

Note: This recipe originally appeared on RuralIntelligence.com on Dec 7, 2014. It's been back-dated here on our blog so that it falls, seasonally, in the right place.   

Recipe: Rustic Italian-Style Meatloaf

It shouldn't come as a surprise that we love meatloaf. First of all, it's MEAT. LOAF. And, like a soup or stew, it makes awesome leftovers and it's super easy to throw together. We're busy preparing for Christmakkah dinner this week, so it seemed like the perfect thing to cook. We keep two kinds of meatloaf in heavy rotation. One is based on Jake's father recipe - kind of a rustic Italian style. The other is more of a French-country-pate-thing. We went rustic this week but don't worry - we'll post the classed up version another time. 

The secret behind this amazing loaf is that it's essentially just a giant classic Italian meatball. We picked up a pound of hot Italian sausage from Flying Pigs, a pound of ground beef from Grazin Angus, and pulled out some frozen ground pastured veal from Dickson’s. All that awesome meat gets "loafed" together with some spices, bread crumbs, milk and eggs, and presto! Surround it with sliced onions and canned whole tomatoes and in the end you have a spicy, garlicky, super-moist meatloaf and a thick tomato sauce to slather on it. Oh yeah, and we add bacon! This is one of those dishes that's ideal for a dinner party or a hearty week night meal.

Italian Style Meatloaf

+ 1 lb ground beef

+ 1 lb ground veal

+ 1 lb hot Italian sausage

+ 2 eggs

+ ½ cup bread crumbs

+ ½ cup whole milk

+ ½ cup Parmesan cheese, grated

+ 3 garlic cloves, minced

+ salt and pepper

+ ½ lbs of sliced bacon

+ 1 onion sliced

+ 1 can of whole tomatoes crushed by hand, liquid drained

1. Preheat oven to 500. Combine the milk and bread crumbs, allowing the crumbs to absorb most of the milk - about 3 minutes. 

2. Lightly beat the eggs and combine in a large bowl with meat, cheese, garlic, salt and pepper. Mix until combined and place in a baking dish, forming it into a loaf. There should be some room around the loaf - a 9x13 baking pan works perfectly.

3. Lay the strips of bacon over the loaf and spread the onions around the bottom of the pan. Remove the tomatoes out of the can one at a time, slightly crushing them in your hand as you add them on top of the onions.

4. Place in oven. After 15 minutes, turn the temperature down to 350. The meatloaf will be done in another 45 minutes.

Serves 4 with leftovers.

(Note: We recently broke our 9x13 pan, so we made this loaf in a smaller container. Because the juices couldn't spread out and didn't evaporate during cooking, it didn't firm up enough for us to cut nice clean slices. And we didn't let it cool at all. It was still great - but if you're making it the centerpiece of a party it's best to have a wider pan and let it sit for 10 minutes.)

Sunday Dinner: Swedish Meatballs & Egg Noodles

After an exhausting week we decided to have a quiet Sunday night at home, just the two of us. Silka must have spent Saturday night dreaming of the upcoming holidays, because she woke up Sunday morning with her heart set on a traditional Swedish Christmas Eve dish: köttbullar, or Swedish Meatballs.

With the exception of Ikea, Swedish meatballs are probably one of the best recognized cultural exports of Scandinavia. And for good reason - they taste amazing! Throughout our month-long visit with Silka's relatives on Gotland we saw them on almost every menu, each time with a twist unique to the restaurant. But - as with most classic dishes - we're pretty convinced that our family recipe is the best. Wiveg/Fagergren meatballs are moist and light with lots of onions and plenty of butter. We use a three part mix of beef, pork, and veal (when we can get pastured or rose veal) and the resulting gravy is dark and meaty. 

The dish comes out a little different every time as Silka tinkers with her recipe, scouring traditional Swedish cookbooks to get them just right. And these were! We served the gravy-covered meatballs with some simple egg noodles in a caraway butter sauce and salad. The "plainness" of the egg noodles was a perfect balance to the rich, flavor-packed meatballs and the caraway seeds added a nice textural kick. Traditionally, the köttbullar would be served with lingonberry jam - a crucial part of the meal. Not only does it add color to an otherwise gray and brown plate, but the fruity acid cuts the heaviness of the rest of the meal. The salmbärssylt - another native Gotlandish jam - in our fridge was a perfect substitute.

After stuffing ourselves, we had some freshly-baked classic ginger cookies, or pepparkakor. Cookies, we learned from our visit, are a major part of Swedish daily life. Whenever you take a coffee break (which happens a lot in Sweden!) or finish a meal, an endless selection of cookies magically arrive on the table. It was too late for coffee, so we dunked our crispy cookies in some herbal tea, and settled into our food coma to watch TV.

Meatballs in Gravy

From Selma Wifstrand's Favorite Swedish Recipes

+ ½ lb beef

+ ¼ lb veal

+ ¼ lb pork

+ ½ cup bread crumbs

+ 1 ½ cups, half cream half water mixture

+ 1 egg

+ 3 tablespoon onion, chopped

+ 2 tsp salt

+ butter for frying

+ salt and pepper 

+ water and/or red wine 

Gravy

+ pan drippings

+ 1 tablespoon flour

+ 1 cup cream

+ salt and pepper

1. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a skillet and saute onions until golden brown.

2. In the meantime, soak the bread crumbs in cream/water mixture.

3. When finished, remove onions from pan and combine with meat, egg, bread crumb mixture and salt and pepper. Mix until smooth.

4. Shape balls, using about 2 tablespoons per ball. Fry in batches with butter over medium-high heat until evenly brown. After each batch, clear the skillet with water or wine and gather drippings in a container to the side. Our meatballs are never perfectly round, or even close. But that doesn't effect the taste at all! When all the balls are cooked, set aside and cover or keep in oven to keep warm.

6. In the skillet, mix flour, cream, and reserved pan drippings. Simmer for 10 minutes. If sauce becomes too thick, add more cream.

7. Serve with gravy poured over meatballs.

Egg Noodles in Caraway Butter
From Martha Stewart 

+ coarse salt
+ 8 ounces egg noodles
+ 1 tablespoon caraway seeds
+ 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
+ 1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley - we didn't have any, but we thought they were fine without

1. Fill a large pot three-quarters full with water. Bring to a boil; add 1 tablespoon salt. Add noodles; cook, according to package instructions, until al dente. Drain noodles, and return to pot.
2. Toast caraway seeds in a dry small skillet over medium-low heat until fragrant and slightly darkened, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat. Add butter to skillet, and swirl gently until butter has melted.
3. Pour caraway butter over noodles. Stir in parsley. Season noodles with salt, if necessary.

Field Trip: The Meat Market

Right around the time that Jake started to seriously consider training as a butcher, he began to hear buzz about a guy in Great Barrington who was raising money to open a butcher shop. That guy was Jeremy Stanton - that's right, Sean Stanton’s brother - a successful Western MA chef and entrepreneur. 

With his curiosity peaked Jake introduced himself to Jeremy at a local summer pig roast and got the scoop directly. He found out that Jeremy planned to open a full shop that would sell only local-pasture raised, particularly heritage breed, animals. The shop would also house an industrial kitchen where he could make fresh sausage, smoked meats, dry-aged beef, charcuterie, stocks and frozen-cooked meals. Additionally, the shop would serve as the base for Jeremy's already thriving company Fire Roasted Catering, which specializes in preparing and serving local pasture-raised whole pigs, lambs and chickens as well as steam-boat roasts (the entire hind leg or round of beef), all over wood-fires. It sounded truly amazing!

After raising enough money through the principals of Slow Money, Jeremy opened The Meat Market this fall. And man, oh, man is it beautiful! Outfitted with simple ceramic tile, glass, wood and stainless steel, it's a bright, clean but traditionally rustic space that feels refreshingly contemporary. The shop has a freezer full of frozen food, a case of charcuterie including ham, bacon, pate, and sausages, and of course a full case of chicken, beef, pork, and occasionally lamb. Jeremy also stocks a selection of local produce and specialty food products, so you can walk away from the shop with all the fixings of a simple, delicious meal.

Through the airy space, customers can watch Jeremy and his team bustling to break down animals, call local farmers, make stocks, and offer suggestions. They butchers are friendly and prepared to tell you how to prepare any cut, as well as which farm the meat comes from. Right now you can sit at a counter and eat soups, stews, and a few other delicious treats and soon Jeremy plans on having a small menu of meat-based dishes and a small seating area. 

It's been such a thrill to watch Jeremy open up this inspiring shop. On a small, maybe selfish, level it has completely opened up our Berkshire shopping options. But The Meat Market's real contribution is much farther reaching. It has created a stronger support system for the local farmers who are doing such fantastic work - and a more direct route to customers' stomachs.