Meatball Madness (II) Italian Style Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

Meatball madness! What? Again? You can't escape the madness! Especially when you have a lot of them hanging in your fridge, in wich case you can make them shine again with an easy and super delicious sauce. 

Now, the results of the original madness were some meatballs with a definite sweet touch, so I wanted to make a more sour sauce. 

Ingredients: 

the juice of 4 big, ripe, red tomatoes(just use a grater), 
1 medium onion, 
2 garlic cloves, 
200 ml of red wine, 
250 grams of tiny cherry and plum tomatoes, both red and yellow, 
half a handfull of basil leaves, 
salt and pepper

Saute the diced onion and garlic in some olive oil, add the wine and let the liquid reduce by half. Next put in the tomato juice and the tomatoes, chopped basil, salt, pepper and bring to a simmer on low heat, pop in the meatballs and cook with a lid on for about half an hour. a very simple but great tasting sauce that brings a wonderfull zing to the meatballs, so get your madness on and start cooking those meatballs.

Enjoy,

Beef Burgers, Corn on the Cob and Spicy Broccoli Salad

… or how to smoke your neighbors out of their apartments and into yours…. Or how I discovered I need a new grill.

Good news everyone! (welcome back Futurama) We cooked again and it was delicious, and with a very nice feedback from our neighbors that, despite the smoke, asked us what we were cooking. This recipe feels like it should be cooked outside, but we managed to pull together nicely (sort of) with our trusty, old grill.

For the burgers: 

500 grams of minced beef meat, 

1 large egg, 

1 tbs of chopped fresh thyme, 

salt, pepper, 

spicy smoked paprika, 

1 tbs of mustard, 

4 tbs of bread crumbs. 

Mix all the ingredients together by hand, until they are all evenly distributed. Next, make some golf sized balls of the meat, that you flat into patties of about 2 cm thickness. Put them on a plate, sprinkle with olive oil and put in the fridge (this helps the ingredients bind). Cook the burgers of a very hot grill, medium heat, for 4-5 minutes on each side.

For the corn, drum roll please: you put it on a very hot grill and turn it when it starts to get some nice charred marks. For the corn, I mixed up some butter with some dried chipotle flakes, salt and dried garlic powder and topped the cob with this mix. 

The spicy kick and the also slightly sweet and smoky texture of the chilli went really well with the charred corn and the garlic taste, definitely something I will cook again.

For the salad: 

200 grams of broccoli flowers, 

200 grams of green beans (I used both yellow and green), 

half of a large, ripe tomato, 

lemon juice, 

olive oil, 

salt, pepper, 

dried chipotle flakes (or a fresh medium hot red chilli, finely diced), 

2-3 garlic cloves. 

Creating this may require some timing so, try and get everything to the finish line in about the same time. Boil the beans in salted water until they are just al dente, max 15 minutes, it takes considerably less if the beans are freshly picked or very young; remove from the water and set aside. 

For the broccoli, boil them in the green bean water for 2 minutes, leave them to dry out a bit, the coat them with oil and chipotle flakes and grill the broccoli flowers on the super hot grill until you get some nice marks. Cut the garlic into fine slices and fry them for 30 seconds in hot olive oil, quickly remove from the oil, the garlic will continue to cook even then and you want to make sure you get some nice (tiny) golden garlic chips. Cut the tomato, put the broccoli, beans and garlic on top and sprinkle some chopped sour weed (sheep's sorrel, red sorrel, field sorrel), after which pour some lemon juice and olive oil on the salad (don’t forget the salt and pepper and the red chilli, if you’re using that). 

The heat from the beans and broccoli will almost melt a very ripe tomato and sourness of the sorrel will bring a very nice kick to the dish.

Plate everything and grab yourself a nice, cold beer, you deserve it. After all you’ve made the neighbours notice you, and that can only be good…. Right?

Take care,

Mr. G.