Tuesday, August 2, 2011

put my balls in your mouth

so meat balls. there are a dozen ways to do them, i kinda mixed two and it was alright. used alton brown's take on sweedish meatballs as a baseline but i like my balls simmered in a stock to add flavor. i think it worked out ok, but simmered meat needs a sauce because it can dissolve the fats, and the gravy i made from this was just alright. ON THE OTHER HAND, the stock that resulted from this made an awesome risotto. if my lunch break has time i will post both.

so meatballs

ground chicken
ground pork
three king oyster mushrooms
clementines
manishevets blackberry wine
2 slices wheat bread
an onion
1/4 cup milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 egg yokes
  • bread crumbs and corn meal
  • penis in yo face
  • 2 bottles ipa
  • some flour

  • get a big honkin pot
  • cut the mushrooms into good bite size chunks and throw them in there with some butter, half the onion, and garlic.
  • saute that shit till browning happens. when it does, throw in the beer, squeeze in a few clementines, add a good half cup to a cup of the wine, and top it up with water after it starts to boil. i had a lot of trouble getting a good, flavorful broth here. if id thought about it i probably would have tried to use the ve-gan stock from the other day, but i didnt have leeks in the house, so fuck me. anyway, anything you can think of that would go well, add it. i think this actually worked pretty well at the end of the day. simmer it for a good 20 mins, then add some pepper to taste, and a decent amount of salt. my trick is to keep adding salt until all the flavors start to pop. most stocks go for the seawater rule, but i think thats kind of overkill. leave simmering.

  • rip up the bread and soak it in the milk
  • saute the other half onion till its softish, like the democrats on foreign policy
  • in a big fucking bowl put the meats, the onion, the egg yolks, the bread mixture, the spices, then mix that shit together. if you have a stand mixer, now would be a good time to bring that out. if not, use a spoon, or get in there with your hands. just up to your elbows in fucking meat.

  • when everything is mixed well, its time to cook this shit. be sure you have a slotted spoon or frying skimmer handy.
  • form the balls into like two inch rounds. you can make them smaller, but this is what i did. as each ball is formed, just gently float it into the stock. when it starts to get a bit crowded in the pot, stop making balls, and wait like five minutes.

  • here is where i ran into real trouble.
  • my balls were still a bit raw when i first pulled them out, so i put them on a cookie sheet. i had to do a few batches to fill the cookie sheet, by which time the first batch had finished cooking internally whilst resting. still, i didn't really have a sauce prepared, so i decided to roast them a bit to get some gravy. this is kind of ass backwards in retrospect. really what i did was roast out he juice from the balls, make them into a sauce, and put them back on top. this is silly. fucking silly. just plain dumb. i should have just made a separate sauce. alas.

  • so once i had them on the pan, i sprinkled them with the breadcrumbs and corn meal, then roaste them for maybe five minutes under the broiler. pulled them out, transferred the balls to a plate, put the pan on the stove, and opened a beer. using a ladle i splashed some of the broth into the pan, and then a little manichevetz and maybe a quarter cup of my beer. the rest i drank.

  • using a spatula i deglazed the pan, then i added some pepper, and started sprinkling flower in. gravy is basically a roux, and like with roux you need to let the mixture toast to get rid of the bready flavor. so just let it simmer a bit until it cooks down to a thick paste, but keep it moving with a spatula so it dosent stick. when it starts to stick and/ or changes color, add more broth. then let it cook down a bit, then add more broth, keep doing this till you have a fair amount of gravy at a good consistency. put in a bowl. drink it with a straw.

  • so that's quite a bit actually! I'll talk about he risotto tommorow.

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