Chicken miso meatballs

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Chelsea

…and then it was a week later, not just a few days. That’s the way summer is sometimes, isn’t it? And there’s about to be another hiatus as I travel to Oregon for our annual visitation.

We are now officially half a year through this meatball exploration. I like assigning myself these year-long projects because they give me plenty of opportunities to experiment, and when I emerge, breathless, come December, I feel I’ve attained (sometimes tenuous) mastery over the subject at hand.

A year-long food project can present challenges, though. The chief difficulty, it seems to me, is the bald truth that single food types don’t often translate well through the seasons. A sweet potato project, as delicious as that might sound, would not be as welcome in July as it would in November. Meatballs, similarly, seem most suited for cooler months: draped with sauce, topped or wedged beside or squashed between bread and cheese, they are a heavy prospect.

What is needed, then, as this month grows more and more sultry, is a summer-soaked meatball: light on the stomach, feathery in texture, heavy only in flavor. Conveniently, this meatball dish delivers not just on flavorful meatballs that didn’t leave us feeling meatball-shaped, but it takes into account and makes gratuitous use of that most prolific and dreaded of summer vegetables: zucchini. If you have a garden, chances are you’re growing zucchini. And as you know, it’s getting to be the season when you’ve given loaves of zucchini bread to everyone you can think of, jammed a few in your freezer for good measure, stuffed and baked a few of the baseball bat sized specimens that escaped your notice for a few weeks, and the thing just keeps spitting out squashes. This dinner takes at least two more off your hands by offering them sliced into thin strands, barely cooked, and woven into a tangle of soba noodles.

For the meatballs themselves I went in an Asian direction, inspired mostly by pot stickers, one of my favorite indulgent snack foods, but in part by the container of miso paste hanging out in the back of my refrigerator. The aggressive saltiness of the paste means you don’t have to add a tremendous amount of additional seasoning to the meatballs, but as long as you are judicious, it doesn’t overwhelm the classic, welcome pairing of ginger and garlic. There’s lemongrass here too, for some fragrance and brightness, its persistent woody fibers tamed and made entirely edible after a run-in with a microplane.

The meatballs cook in a simple broth flavored with more ginger and lemongrass – which conveniently helps you use up those stalks after you’ve grated down the bulb end – and means you can serve this like a pasta, with just a bit of flavorful sauce to moisten the noodles, or, my preference, enough broth to make it almost like a soup, with the meatballs all but bobbing. Beautifully, the meatballs, the noodles, and the broth taste just as good at room temperature as they do just off the stove, in case you, in the midst of summer, are boiling quite enough on your own.

Chicken Miso Meatballs with Soba and Zucchini Noodles

Serves 3-4

For meatballs:

2 tablespoons red miso paste

1 egg

1 lb. ground chicken (dark meat preferred)

1 tablespoon grated lemongrass bulb (remove the outermost layer first, then use a microplane or a zester)

1 tablespoon grated fresh garlic (about 4 cloves)

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger (easiest if frozen first)

¼ cup finely chopped fresh cilantro

3 tablespoons finely chopped green onion, dark and light green parts only

¼ teaspoon black pepper

½ tablespoon fish sauce

3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil

For sauce:

3 cups low sodium chicken broth

3 lemongrass bulbs, smashed with the back of a knife (you can certainly use the one you grated from earlier)

knuckle of fresh ginger (about 2 tablespoons)

1-2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce (if you are gluten-free, be sure to check the label – most soy sauce contains wheat)

For noodles:

2 bundles soba noodles (200 grams or about 7 ounces)

2 medium zucchini

2 teaspoons sesame oil

Toasted sesame seeds and sprigs of cilantro, optional

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg and miso paste. The goal here is to break up the miso a bit for easier integration with the chicken.
Add the ground chicken, lemongrass, garlic, ginger, cilantro, green onion, black pepper, and fish sauce to the egg and miso. Using your fingertips, lightly mix and work the seasonings into the ground chicken until evenly distributed.
Heat a teaspoon of the olive or vegetable oil in a large, deep skillet over medium high heat. Scoop up about a teaspoon of the meatball mixture, press it into a small patty, and fry it about a minute on each side until cooked through, then taste for seasoning and adjust for the rest of the mixture if needed.
Heat the remaining olive or vegetable oil in the skillet over medium high heat. While it warms, use a tablespoon and moist hands to make small meatballs. They will be very soft – don’t worry about making them perfectly round. As you make each tablespoon-sized meatball, set it aside on a clean plate. You should have enough mixture for 18-20 meatballs.
Carefully place meatballs in the skillet, taking care they do not touch. You will likely need to fry them in batches. Brown them on all sides (about 2 minutes per side), then remove to a clean plate. Repeat with a new batch of meatballs until all are browned.
Your skillet should now have a layer of deeply browned bits and drippings stuck to the bottom. This is called fond and it is lush with flavor. Add the 3 cups of chicken broth directly to this residue in the pan and use a whisk to scrape up and incorporate the fond into the liquid. Toss in the smashed lemongrass bulbs and the knob of fresh ginger, then bring to a simmer.
When the liquid reaches a simmer, taste for seasoning. If it needs salt, add the 1-2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Keep in mind the flavors will concentrate a bit as cooking continues. Add all of the meatballs back into the broth mixture. Try to keep them in a single layer, but it’s okay if they bump up against each other now. Clap on the lid, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer for 15-20 minutes, basting and turning the meatballs occasionally.
While the meatballs simmer, make the noodles. Draw a y-shaped peeler along the zucchini lengthwise repeatedly to cut it into long, thin strips. Stack up 5 or 6 of these strips at a time and, very carefully, cut them into thin “noodles” with a sharp knife (see photos above for reference). Set aside.
Cook the soba noodles in boiling salted water according to package directions. About 30 seconds before you are ready to drain them, toss in the zucchini noodles and stir gently. Drain and rinse as instructed.
In the same pot you used for the noodles, heat the 2 teaspoons of sesame oil over medium-low heat. Add the drained noodles back in and toss gently to evenly coat them with the oil and to be sure the zucchini is well distributed, not just clumped up by itself. Keep warm until the meatballs are ready.
To plate, coil up a tangle of soba and zucchini noodles in a shallow bowl. Top with meatballs – 5 per person is about right – and ladle on about ½ cup of broth for a soupy presentation (my preference), or 3-4 tablespoons of broth for a more pasta-like assembly. Add a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds or sprig of cilantro if desired, and serve hot or warm.

Rain check

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Chelsea

Hi friends. I’ve got something glorious for you. There are meatballs. There is zucchini. There is miso and garlic and lemongrass and ginger. It looks a little like this:

But you’re not getting it today. Because I’m in the air, winging my way home to California from Charlottesville, Virginia, where I’ve been visiting my family and doing too much eating, and drinking, and sightseeing, to even think about composing a short tract about meatballs. That’s the way of vacation, I suppose.

So I’ll see you soon, I expect, once I’ve had time to readjust to west coast time, and sort through my thoughts. Be well!

Crab and Shrimp Balls

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Chelsea

I realize that when most people think of a meatball, fish is not what immediately springs to mind. Ground, seasoned meat, bound with egg and sometimes bread, and fried and braised in sauce seems to work for land animals better than those more oceanically-inclined. But I think this is a mistake. After all, what is a fish cake, really, besides a flattened meatball? And crab cakes are such wonderful, beautiful things that, now that summer is upon us, the beach child in me wants to eat all the time (seriously. Lunch and dinner are obvious, but the idea of eggs benedict with a fat, tender crab cake instead of an English muffin fills me with longing). So when it occurred to me that, really, a crab cake was only different from a meatball in shape and mindset, I knew immediately I needed to change both.

The meatball I imagined had to be aggressively herby, bright with citrus zest, and obviously needed to be shallow fried, not braised in sauce. And since N. would not be partaking due to his distaste for shellfish (nobody’s perfect…), I realized I could add shrimp to up the succulence factor even more, and these crab and shrimp balls were born.

You have a few choices when it comes to crab. There’s no sense in harvesting it yourself for this dish – it’s too much work, and the pre-cracked and pasteurized options are perfectly fine. What you really have to decide is whether to blow your budget on lump or jumbo lump meat, which comes in large, sweet pieces from the muscles connected to the crab’s swimming legs, or whether to go for more affordable claw meat. I tend to think the claw meat has a stronger flavor, and since I was going to pulse it up and mix it with herbs anyway (and because I’m cheap), I went with a package of claw meat and was quite pleased with the taste.

As for the shrimp, you want raw, because it will keep the meatball together a bit better, and there’s nothing so unpleasant as rubbery, overcooked shrimp. If you can find it deveined, then all you’ll have to do is pull the shell and tail off before dropping it into the food processor. If you do end up with shrimp that still have the shell and vein, this how-to from the kitchn gives a pretty clear set of instructions for how to do the prep yourself.

Feel free to mix up the herbs to your liking, though I’d include at least one onion-y component. I toyed with the idea of adding a teaspoon or two of excruciatingly finely diced jalapenos, but since I was planning to have this with a spicy salad (more on that next week!), I opted to leave the meatballs themselves heat-free. I do think, though, a bit of fire in these would be lovely, especially if you plan to dunk them into a cooling or fatty sauce of some sort.

Obviously I loved these. I’m a sucker for shellfish in almost any application, and coated in bread crumbs and fried = me rendered completely helpless. Adding citrus zest instead of juice (to control the moisture content of the meatballs) proved to be a particularly good move; it broke up what could have become a monotonous flavor and kept the meatballs feeling bright and light, despite being fried. The panko formed a perfect tight, crisp crust to protect the interior, keeping it hot and relatively ungreasy.

Hearkening back to my childhood when, more often than not, I ordered the fried seafood appetizer platter as my entrée, I ate these meatballs as my main course, accompanied by a banh-mi-inspired salad I’ll tell you more about next week. But they would clearly excel (and go a bit further) as appetizers as well.

Note: you’ll notice that there is panko in the meatballs themselves as well as coating them. I thought about leaving the interior breadcrumb-free, but the resulting mixture was so delicate I feared they would just collapse. Adding this bit of starch and allowing them to chill for 45 minutes before cooking eliminated this risk of disintegration.

Crab and Shrimp Balls

Makes 16 (serves two as an entrée, 4 as an appetizer)

6 ounces crab meat (claw meat is fine, but blow the bank on lump or jumbo lump if you prefer)

8 ounces raw shrimp, preferably peeled and deveined

2 tablespoons minced fresh chives

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

2 tablespoons minced fresh dill

2 teaspoons lemon zest, lime zest, or a combination

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

1 egg

1 ½ cups panko breadcrumbs, divided

1 cup vegetable oil, to fry

Check your crab and shrimp carefully and remove any lingering shell bits or cartilage, then deposit the meat in the belly of your food processor. Add the herbs, the citrus zest, the salt and pepper, the egg, and ½ cup of panko breadcrumbs. Pulse three or four times for two seconds each, until the herbs are well integrated and the crab and shrimp are broken down a bit. You don’t want a paste, but you do want small pieces that will cling together.
Pour the remaining 1 cup of panko breadcrumbs into a pie plate or other wide dish with sides and spread them out into an even layer. With moistened hands, scoop rounded tablespoons of crab and shrimp mixture, lightly roll them into balls (they will be quite tender), and roll them in the panko until completely coated. Repeat until you have used up all the crab and shrimp mixture, then refrigerate the coated meatballs for 45 minutes to allow them to firm up a bit.
After 45 minutes, remove meatballs from the refrigerator and set them aside while you heat the 1 cup of vegetable oil in a 10 inch skillet. When the oil is shimmering, or when a spare piece of panko you drop in sizzles and small bubbles are released all around it, it’s time to add the meatballs. Place 8 meatballs in the oil carefully, keeping them separate from one another, and cook over medium or medium-high for 2-3 minutes on each side, until they are uniformly crisp and golden (I know, I realize that meat“ball” suggests an absence of sides, but I usually end up with a semi-round object that needs two or three turns to completely immerse).
As the meatballs finish cooking, remove them to a paper-towel-lined plate and repeat with the remaining 8 meatballs. They will stay hot inside for 5-10 minutes, but you can place the finished ones in a warm oven while their compatriots cook, just to be sure.
Serve immediately, with a remoulade or tartar sauce, fries, or a side salad.

Caprese Meatballs

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Chelsea

You may have noticed there was no recipe post on Monday. I could, were I a bit less honest, have sold you on the idea that this was related to the holiday weekend, or me traveling, or some such minor fabrication. But I don’t have a great poker face, so I’ll admit it was in fact because I’ve been feeling a bit of whatever the cook’s version of writer’s block might be called. I had cloudy ideas of things I could cook, I just didn’t really feel like figuring them out.

Then I went to a wedding in Sacramento on Sunday, and saw a friend I realized I’ve known for over a decade, despite last seeing him something like seven or eight years ago. As we caught up, he told me he’d had to stop reading this blog because it always made him hungry, and licking his computer screen seemed like a bad idea. Despite the concerning image this conjured, it tripped something in my brain. Making you hungry is just what I’m after! That means – at least in his case – this blog is doing its job.

Thereafter, the block was broken. On the drive back to Los Angeles (only while I was a passenger, of course), I kept having to text myself food ideas. One was these meatballs, which I’m posting off-schedule because I have to get them in while it’s still May! I know you aren’t reading this, J., but I hope you would want to eat them anyway, since it’s your fault thanks to you that they came to be.

Previous to my little block, my sister and I had a rapid-fire email exchange of meatball ideas. One of her suggestions – a bruschetta meatball – eventually morphed into what I came up with here: a nod to a caprese salad in a moment when the juicy, swollen garden-ripe tomatoes of your dreams are far from ready. A beef meatball shot through with sundried tomato chunks, ribbons of basil, and roasted garlic. Seared and then simmered in a balsamic vinegar and red wine sauce. And then, the pay-off: the glorious goo of melted mozzarella cheese oozing out from the inside. We snuggled them down in a pillow of soft polenta and gobbled them up before the cheese inside had time to cool.

Though I prefer these meatballs piping hot with a molten center of oozing cheese, they are also tasty as part of a sandwich or an antipasti platter. In fact, they basically are the platter – tomato, herbs, cheese, and meat already included. They just need a drizzle of olive oil, maybe a few torn leaves of fresh basil or parsley, and a glass of wine to complete the picture.

A word: as you’ll see from the procedure, these are delicate little beasts. I made mine without the egg I’ve added to the ingredient list here, and half of my meatballs were oozing cheese before they completed their simmer. They were still good, but didn’t have the melty surprise factor I was hoping for. The addition of egg should make the meat and crumbs bind more securely. Still, though, be gentle as you work with these, and be doubly triply sure the cheese is completely enclosed inside the meat mixture before you introduce them to the heat.

Caprese Meatballs

Makes 10-12 large meatballs

For meatballs:

4 cloves garlic + a splash of olive oil

½ cup fresh bread crumbs

½ cup milk or cream

½ cup oil-packed sundried tomatoes, well drained

1 cup loosely packed basil leaves

1 tablespoon finely chopped chives – I like to use my kitchen scissors

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

12 ounces (3/4 lb.) ground beef, at least 15% fat

1 egg, beaten

10-12 room temperature miniature mozzarella balls, or 10-12 small cubes of fresh mozzarella cheese

3 tablespoons olive oil

For sauce:

Meatball drippings

1 tablespoon flour

1 ½ cups beef broth or chicken broth

1 cup dry red wine

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

1-2 teaspoons brown sugar or honey, optional

To serve:

Soft polenta, cooked according to package directions with water, milk, or broth

A few sprigs of basil for presentation, if desired

Place garlic and splash of olive oil in a small oven-safe dish. Cover with aluminum foil and roast at 300F for 20-25 minutes, until garlic cloves are soft and fragrant inside their skins. When cool enough to handle, remove and discard the skins.
Once you’ve ground your fresh bread crumbs in the food processor, combine them with the milk or cream in a small bowl and let sit for 10 minutes or so to soak.
In the belly of the food processor, combine the sundried tomatoes, basil, cooled and peeled garlic cloves, and chives. Pulse at 3 seconds intervals until all ingredients are very finely chopped. They won’t quite form a paste because there’s no liquid in the mix, but they should all be in very small pieces for easy meatball integration.
Dump the tomato and herb mixture into a mixing bowl. Drain the bread crumbs by squeezing them out with your hands, then add the crumbs to the tomato and herb mixture. Add the salt, pepper, ground beef, and egg, and use your fingertips to lightly combine into a fairly homogenous mixture.
(If you want to check for seasoning at this point, heat a very small puddle of olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat and drop in a teaspoon or two of the meat mixture. Let it cook, then taste. Adjust salt and pepper as needed.)
When you are ready to form the meatballs, flatten about 2 tablespoons of the meat mixture in your hand, then enclose it around one of the room temperature mozzarella balls. It’s important for the cheese to be room temperature because otherwise it might not melt completely inside the meatball during the simmer. Be sure the cheese is completely sealed inside the meat layer; structural integrity is important! Repeat until meat mixture is used up, setting each meatball on a plate once formed.
Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Gently add the meatballs in a single layer and allow them to sear undisturbed for about 2 minutes per side. When nicely browned on all (or at least most) sides, remove to a clean plate while you make the sauce.
Reduce the heat on the skillet to medium and sprinkle 1 tablespoon of flour over the remaining oil and meatball drippings already in the pan. Whisk the flour into the drippings and let cook for a minute or two into a soft golden smear.
Slowly add the broth, whisking continuously to ensure no lumps form, then add the red wine and the balsamic. Cook, whisking occasionally, until the liquid reaches a simmer. Simmer for 5-10 minutes, turning the heat down if needed. The sauce will take on a velvety appearance and thicken slightly. Now give it a taste, and season with salt and pepper as needed. If it is too acidic for you, add 1-2 teaspoons brown sugar or honey, but remember it will be less intense once ladled over meatballs and polenta.
When the sauce is velvety and slightly thickened, add the meatballs back in. Be gentle! We don’t want them to crack open.
Simmer the meatballs in the sauce, basting often (but not flipping – again, structural integrity!), for 15 minutes. Serve immediately over soft polenta with a spoonful or two of sauce.

Banh Mi-tballs

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Chelsea

When it comes to creating music, it seems to me there are two basic schools. One begins with the melody, considering sound, instrumentation, rhythm, process. Words and story – if there is one – get added to fit the beat and the harmonics and the feel. The other starts with the words: weaving a story, shouting a chorus, infusing rhyme and connotation and syllabic play. Filtering in notes and melodies that fit the narrative.

Guess which one I favor.

I have the same issue with food. Seriously, when it comes to creating a recipe, I should probably start with the fundamentals: ingredients. Taste. Familiarity. Procedure and execution and fitting flavors together.

More often than not, though, the singer-songwriter I’ve never been pops to the forefront and I’m instead thinking of names and paragraphs and ways of representing the food I haven’t even made yet.

That’s what happened with this experiment. In fact, this is in many ways the inspiration for the whole meatball project. Not because I’ve had a dish just like it that needed to be recreated. Not because I’m obsessed with or particularly fond of meatballs. No. Because I thought the name “banh mi-tball” was too good to pass up.

As I noted previously, there is a lot of controversy surrounding the authenticity and exactness of such a sandwich. Ratios of meat to vegetable, the types of vegetables, the texture and flour types in the bread, form the bases of entries on numerous discussion forums that range from curious to intensely heated. Names are called. Gluten is flung.

Here’s the thing, though. Now that I’m invested, I just wanted to make a sandwich good enough to be called banh mi-tball. I mean, you can’t back up a heart-wrenching narrative woven in clever rhyme with a tinny little toy guitar and an out-of-tune keyboard. But by the same token, I don’t think you have to be Jimi Hendricks or Eric Clapton to support the story in a satisfying way.

What I’m trying to say here, is that I’m not all that interested in authenticity. I didn’t seek out every banh mi shop in Los Angeles and sample and compare and pester their chefs for trade secrets. Even when I’m not losing my mind grading papers during the semester, I don’t have that kind of time or motivation. The point was, I decided, to strive not for exactness or tradition, but to craft a damn good sandwich. So that’s what I’m going for.

Bread, vegetables (pickled and non), meat, spread. These are the necessary components. There should be a crisp crust, there should be a representation of sourness, spiciness, and umami, there should be a vegetal crunch. For this incarnation, I added strips of fresh Persian cucumbers to my pickles, along with sprigs of cilantro and wedges of lime. I spread my slightly-less-than-crisp “baguettes” with a curiously beautiful coral-hued spread of mayonnaise, sriracha, fish sauce, and lime juice, and I stood back and let my fellow sandwich-diners have their way with the pan full of meatballs on the stove.

Since banh mi sandwiches so often feature pork, a pork meatball was the way to go. It would need to echo some of the flavors found in the sandwich itself, which means this is one of those recipes with a tablespoon of this and a teaspoon of that and an ingredient list long enough that you might at first be put off. You shouldn’t be, though. Like so many good Asian recipes, especially sauces, every single individual component has a part to play, and none are particularly exotic. Ginger and garlic for their aromatic spice. Jalapeños and cilantro for freshness and heat. A few tendrils of pickled onion and a squeeze of lime for sourness. Soy sauce and brown sugar to balance that sourness. Fish sauce and red miso paste for that earthy umami funk. Capitalizing on my previous meatball experiments, a pinch of baking powder for lightness and an egg to bind everything together.

Despite the lengthy ingredient list, the actual production of the meatballs is easy. Remembering my satisfying results with Swedish meatballs, I dumped everything in the food processor and let it whir. Pâté is a frequent protein option for banh mi sandwiches, so the smooth, bouncy texture I knew I could achieve with mechanized mixing seemed to fit the bill. After a mix, a quick roll with moistened hands, and a shallow fry in vegetable and sesame oil, all that remains is a twenty minute simmer in flavorful liquid. I opted for chicken broth with a bit of miso paste and a bit of brown sugar swirled in, which resulted in a poaching liquid so tasty I debated serving small bowls of it on the side.

Once you have all the components, sandwich construction is easy. Because people tend to like crafting their own, this actually makes remarkably good party food. Just lay out your pickles, your vegetables, your bread, set down a jar of spread and a bowl of meatballs and watch your guests go to town. Load up your own baguette with enough fillings to stretch the corners of your mouth as you attempt that first bite. Then hide the leftovers. Because you’re going to want this again, and you might not want to share it.

Banh Mi-tballs

Makes 22-24 tablespoon-sized meatballs

For the meatballs:

2 cloves garlic, skins removed

2 teaspoons grated ginger

1-2 tablespoons jalapeño slices

¼ cup cilantro

1 pound ground pork

1 tablespoon red miso paste

½ tablespoon soy sauce

½ tablespoon fish sauce

½ tablespoon brown sugar

½ tablespoon lime juice

¼ teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped pickled onions

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 tablespoon sesame oil

For the sauce:

1-2 cups low sodium chicken broth

1 tablespoon red miso paste

1 teaspoon brown sugar

Add the garlic, ginger, jalapeños, and cilantro to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until almost paste-like. This will ensure easier integration and no large chunks of garlic.
Add the pork and all other meatball ingredients through the 1 egg (that is, everything except the vegetable and sesame oil), then clamp on the lid and pulse to combine until the vegetable bits are well integrated and the pork itself is smooth and slightly gluey in texture.
Working with moistened hands to avoid too much stickiness, roll the mixture into tablespoon sized balls. When all are rolled, heat the vegetable oil and sesame oil in a large skillet over medium heat until the oil shimmers, then carefully add the meatballs in a single layer.
Fry over medium heat until browned on all sides; 5-8 minutes. Remove to a clean plate.
In the skillet, whisk together the chicken broth, the 1 tablespoon of red miso, and the 1 teaspoon of brown sugar, and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Carefully place the meatballs into the simmering broth, again in a single layer, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low.
Simmer meatballs for ten minutes, then flip each one over and simmer for 10 minutes more. Serve hot, warm, or room temperature on a sandwich with pickles, vegetables, and spread (recipe follows).

Sriracha and lime mayonnaise

makes a generous ⅓ cup; enough for about 4 sandwiches

⅓ cup mayonnaise

zest of one lime

1 teaspoon lime juice

½ tablespoon sriracha or to taste

1 teaspoon fish sauce (go easy; it’s strong)

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and mix well to combine.
To assemble the sandwiches, split baguettes lengthwise, spread generously with sriracha and lime mayonnaise, then layer on meatballs, pickled vegetables of your choice, cucumber, sliced jalapeños, cilantro sprigs, and if desired, a squeeze of lime juice.

Mom and Myrna’s (Swedish) Meatballs

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Chelsea

I fervently hope you have at least one recipe in your arsenal that your family is just mad about. In my case, I guess that might be… tacos? Or perhaps, pardon the sub-par photography, pot pie. For my mom, this recipe is a take on Swedish meatballs from an old cookbook with a faded gold cover. Populated by numerous, lightly ethnic recipes from various European and Mediterranean regions, the cookbook is most stained and marked (Mom makes adjustments in the margins with pencil) on the “Myrna’s Meatballs” recipe. On the facing page is a photograph of a woman (Myrna, I guess) with well-teased chestnut hair, large glasses, and a round face, in the process of lighting candles over a nicely stocked dining room table.

The meatballs themselves, with their mixture of beef and pork seasoned with warm spices and draped in rich brown gravy, are definitely a take on the Swedish smorgasbord classic, and my family is nuts for them. Every year when we plan our Christmas menu, the one item that doesn’t change, it seems, is these meatballs. This past year, because the plan was all rolled appetizers, the meatballs didn’t fit the theme. Rather than skip them, however, they became Christmas Eve dinner instead. Christmas was saved. For Christmas 2015, we’ve already decided the theme will be “food on a stick” (because, I mean, what else would we do while eating the current year’s offerings than plot options for next year’s celebration?). My sister has already excitedly declared that we’ll just stab the meatballs with toothpicks, and that’s one dish done.

I must confess: I like these meatballs quite a bit, and I enjoy them when they show up in the Christmas spread, but they aren’t quite on my deathbed menu. They are tender and tasty, and the gravy in particular – depth and extra richness imparted by a mere teaspoon of instant coffee powder – is a savory treat. But something about the meatball itself made me want to fiddle.

In one of those lovely coincidences the universe sometimes hands out, the Cooks Illustrated issue in my, well, my bathroom magazine rack (what?) just happened to contain a Swedish meatball recipe, and though many of the ingredients were the same as Myrna’s immortal list, the procedure was different enough to catch my attention. Since one of the things – I think – I wanted to adjust about the family meatball of choice was the texture, it seemed fortuitous to combine-and-conquer.

The main difference in the CI version of Swedish meatballs is the way the meat is prepared. Mom and Myrna knead together the pork, beef, a handful of parsley, spices (plenty of black pepper, as Mom is always telling me), lightly sauteed onions, and breadcrumbs soaked in milk (called a panade) in a bowl before forming soft balls. Taking a cue from sausage making, CI recipe tester J. Kenji Alt instead vigorously paddles the pork in a stand mixer with spices, baking powder for lightness, and the traditional sopping panade. A touch of brown sugar goes in too, for a background hint of sweetness. Grated onions and salt join this combination, and the whipped meat paste is only lightly combined with ground beef. This results in a tender, light meatball with a sort of springiness, achieved by stretching the meat proteins in the pork as it is paddled into a paste-y emulsion. It also more evenly distributes the fat through the meat, which seemed worth imitating.

In my version, because I also wanted to minimize the number of dishes I was going to make N. wash (our version of an egalitarian kitchen: whoever cooks, the other one has to wash up. You can guess how this usually works out), I decided to go for the food processor instead of the stand mixer. I was going to use it to make fresh breadcrumbs anyway, and decided relying on it to grate my onions and mix up the meat would keep things easy. In retrospect, this seems counter-intuitive – wouldn’t the blade tear apart the meat proteins, rather than elongating them? Yet it did produce a pleasing texture.

Mom (and Myrna) brown their meatballs in a few tablespoons of butter, then finish them by simmering them in the gravy for half an hour. The CI version, on the other hand, does more of a shallow fry in vegetable oil, cooking the meatballs completely and then just running them through a quick turn in the sauce. I decided, again, on a slight compromise. I used less oil than the CI recipe, and browned the meatballs on all sides, opting to use my electric skillet so I could control the oil temperature. Once the meatballs were golden and felt almost crisp, I drained them, whisked up the sauce in the same skillet, and returned them to the gravy for the requisite half hour simmer. Any opportunity to add flavor seemed like the right thing to do.

When we couldn’t take the aroma anymore (the dog kept appearing in the doorway of the kitchen, wagging and smiling. Their eternal hope is so encouraging and so sad), I boiled up some egg noodles, tossed them with butter and parsley, and ladled on the main event.

I don’t think I’m allowed to say that my meatballs were better than Mom’s. But they were very, very good. I think the textural change – a subtle tenseness to the exterior that burst when you bit through it, and a tightness to the meatball that was somehow not at all dense – was an improvement. I also added a reserved squeeze of dijon mustard to both the panade mixture and the sauce, and that, along with the bare hint of sweetness from the brown sugar, was a good choice.

But in addition to the texture and the minimal flavor upgrades, I think the nest of buttery noodles made the dish. When we eat these meatballs at Christmas time, they are usually part of a large spread – one little corner of a plate full of wildly varied appetizer items. Here, resting atop an eggy bed, glazed with thick gravy, we really had a chance to appreciate their deep, warm flavors.

Mom and Myrna’s (Swedish) Meatballs

Makes 25-30 1-inch meatballs

For meatballs:

1½ cups bread crumbs (from 1-2 slices of bread)

1 cup whole milk or half and half

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

⅓ cup grated onion (about ½ of a large onion)

1 tablespoon butter

½ pound ground pork

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley + 1 tablespoon for serving

⅛ teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg

⅛ teaspoon ground allspice

⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ pound ground beef

1 cup vegetable oil

For gravy:

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

½ teaspoon brown sugar

1¼ – 1½ cups beef broth

salt and pepper to taste (taste first; sodium content in beef broth may vary)

Using the disc shredder of a food processor or a box grater, grate the onion and cook it in 1 tablespoon butter over medium low heat until tender and translucent but not browned. Set aside to cool.
While onion cooks and cools, use the regular blade of a food processor to create 1½ cups bread crumbs from 1-2 slices of bread (stale is fine). Combine the bread crumbs, the milk or half and half, and 1 teaspoon of dijon mustard in a small bowl and let soak for 5 minutes.
Add the ground pork, cooled onions, ¼ cup parsley, salt, baking powder, brown sugar, and spices to the food processor. Squeeze out the soaked bread and add that as well. Process for 1-2 minutes into a smooth, homogenous mixture. Pause to scrape down the sides as needed.
Dump the pork and bread paste into a large bowl and add the ground beef. Using your hands or a spatula (but hands work better), gently fold the beef into the pork mixture until just incorporated. With moistened hands, form generous tablespoon-sized balls (about 1 inch) from the meat mixture.
Heat oil in a straight-sided skillet to 350F, or until the first meatball sizzles when cautiously dipped in. I used my electric skillet to help monitor the temperature. Fry the meatballs, turning as needed, until brown on all sides – about 5 minutes. Remove and let drain on a paper towel-lined plate or tray while you make the gravy.
For gravy, carefully pour out the remaining oil in the pan, but leave any browned bits behind for extra flavor. These are called fond. Melt the 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat, then sprinkle in the flour and whisk together. Let flour and butter cook for 1-2 minutes into a loose, lightly golden smear. Stir in the instant espresso powder, the brown sugar, and the dijon mustard. Add the beef broth, whisking constantly to deter lumps. Continue to whisk slowly until mixture reaches a simmer and thickens to a gravy consistency. Taste for seasoning, keeping in mind flavors will intensify as it continues to simmer.
Add the meatballs to the gravy in the pan, cover, and cook over low to medium low heat for 30 minutes, basting the meatballs occasionally.
Serve hot or warm over buttered egg noodles, mashed or boiled potatoes, or with toothpicks for an appetizer or smorgasbord spread. Sprinkle the final tablespoon of parsley over the starch or the meatballs themselves for a little brightness.