The recipe was easy enough. I sauteed some onions and a little garlic in olive oil. That was mixed with turkey, an egg, Parmesan, a little milk and breadcrumbs, tomato paste, basil, salt and pepper. And then on to the fun part! I mixed it with my hands.
Although, I must say, it looks a bit ick at this point.
The meat is then balled up and rolled in a little bit of cornmeal (these were difficult pictures to take! I was constantly washing my hands). They were pretty soft until they started to cook and hold together.
The meatballs were cooked in a bit of olive oil until they were brown. TJOC says this will take ten minutes but it took considerably longer (like always).
Eventually they were done and nice and brown.
They were DELICIOUS!! Wow were they good. In fact, they were far better than TJOC's beef version (although not as good as my Italian grandmother's meatballs). I am salivating just thinking about the meatballs--wow, were they (unexpectedly) good. The meatballs are essentially the turkey loaf balled up so I'm now excited about the meatloaf!
I needed something quick to go along with meatballs and decided on the Tuscan bread and tomato soup (pappa al pomadoro) (p. 132). The recipe looks extremely long but is pretty easy. An onion was sauteed in some olive oil, garlic and basil was added to it, and a big can of tomatoes (drained and chopped) was dumped in.
Two cups of chicken stock and some salt and pepper were added and then the concoction was poured over some stale bread (or, in this case, some toasted bread).
From this:
To this:
Easy and tasty, although it would be better with fresh garden tomatoes. I wish I had a garden (and a gardener to go with it--I really hate weeding). We have an extremely limited farmer's market, too, which makes me miss Des Moines. Do they have decent farmer's markets in your neck of the woods? You might notice that I'm asking a lot of questions at the end of these posts but I'd like to know other people's thoughts :)
I usually make turkey meatballs (since don't really eat beef in our house) and these sound pretty close except I've never seen them rolled in cornmeal. I will try that next time!
ReplyDeleteI really miss the DSM farmer's market too, it's by far the best! There's a huge one in Dallas but it's so commercial its like a supermarket that was set outside, defeats the point for me.
I really don't know what the cornmeal accomplishes--maybe helping the concoction stick together? And the DSM farmer's market is really terrific and only gets better--it is so much bigger than when we were in high school!
ReplyDeleteThe chicken meatballs definitely tasted better than they looked. Unfortunately, I didn't sauté the onions before forming the meatballs. That might explain why they didn't stay together as well as I would have liked. The cornmeal helped with that- and I most likely used more than listed in the recipe. You're right- it took longer than 10 minutes to cook the meatballs!
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