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Freaky good zah
Meatballs, glorious meatballs
We had to plan a quick meal for friends and their children for Saturday night. We checked some recipes, and headed to the market (Martin’s supermarket), where we happily found a 1 lb. ground beef/veal/pork blend called “Meatloaf Blend” in the butcher section. This was a very happy discovery, because otherwise we would have had to buy separate 1 lb. packages of ground meat and combine them, and we would have had lots of leftovers!
For our meatballs recipe, we started with Betty Crocker’s Easy Meatballs recipe, and we also borrowed from an Italian-American Meatballs recipe on allrecipes.com. We made just a couple easy tweaks to the combined recipes:
1. Rather than use 80% lean ground beef, we used the grocery store butcher’s Meatloaf Blend 1 lb. package (ground veal/beef/pork).
2. When blending the ground meat and ingredients, we added finely chopped garlic and parsely, and
3. We made our own inexpensive bread crumbs in the food processor with some slightly stale sesame sourdough that worked perfectly.
Our meatballs stuck a little to our baking pan, this could have been avoided with a little cooking spray, and perhaps rolling our meatballs around once during cooking to allow for even results :^)
Our Saturday night easy meal for friends: Sun Dried Tomato Linguine (Farfalle (bow-tie pasta) for the kids) with Marinara and homemade meatballs, Potato Soup, fruit salad and the ubiquitous bacon crumbles as a garnish.
Freakybites Mini Toasted Italian Meatball Sandwiches on Italian Bread
Chicken Stock
Black Mountain Chocolate, Ancho Ginger Test
Salmon with Pasta, Tarragon, Bacon & Asparagus
Blackened Tuna Atop Arugula and Baby Romaine Blend
I found the freshest tuna and pan-seared it with blackening seasoning. And, olive oil.
I make the spice blend with cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, white pepper (if I have it) and black pepper if not and paprika.
I put this on top of arugula and baby romaine with feta, kalamata olives and 3 kinds of tomatoes.
And, with this, I added bacon, avocado, shiitake mushroom and pear Gorgonzola vinaigrette.
Baked French Onion Soup
Good onion soup takes love and devotion. The onions take at minimum an hour, and often two hours, to get to the right stage of carmelization. I start with 5 or 6 large onions. Sometimes I get different types to mix together. They’re all delicious once they’ve been cooked forever. I slice them lengthwise and into half rings. Wide slices are fine. Cook them over medium heat — stir frequently for uniform cooking, and to prevent sticking — until they’re dark brown but not burned and black. Add beef stock and red wine. You can thicken it with flour but I don’t.
Besides cooking the onions with lots of attention for over an hour, the other most important thing that I’ve found with onion soup is your choice in cheese. I used to just use Swiss cheese of any kind, but in the past few years I’ve realized that gruyere or emmenthaler is best. Mixing them is even better.
Then add about 8 cups of beef broth and a splash more of wine. Simmer a bay leaf for 15 minutes.
Cut a slice of crusty or hard bread and put the gruyere and/or the emmenthaler cheese on top. Broil it until bubbly and light brown.
Potato Pancakes
I made these with 2 cups of leftover mashed potatoes mixed together with 2 slightly beaten eggs, 1 tbs of flour, chopped parsley and salt and pepper. If I’d had green onions or chives, I’d have put them in too. I fried them in butter until golden. Yum! Our mashed potatoes had roasted garlic cloves smashed in, but if yours don’t, just add garlic powder.
Making Gravy
We like to brown our flour first. It’s also important to use drippings from the bird.
We whisked the hot drippings into the browned flour. Avoiding lumps, blending smoothly then heating until thickened.
St Andrews Forest Farm 