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Marvelous Meatballs

Try to imagine the time before you owned a food processor, or before they were commonplace. This may be the equivalent of asking you to remember the time before you owned a computer or a cordless phone. Relatively speaking it’s only been a short while. But in the same way a computer would have been considered a luxury item only a decade or two ago, so then were food processors. Prior, if you ground meat at home, you most likely would have used a hand-cranked grinder, the type that can be found at yard sales everywhere.

Ziti with Tomato Sauce and Meatballs

Yield 2-4 servings

For the sauce:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup red wine
1-1/2 cups chicken broth
1-1/2 cups tomato purée

Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a small sauce pot. Add the onion and sauté until translucent. Add the garlic and sauté another minute. Stir in the sugar, basil, salt, and pepper; sauté another minute. Add the red wine, and simmer 30 seconds. Stir in the broth and tomato purée. Simmer 1/2 hour.

For the meatballs:
8 ounces ground beef
1/2 small onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese
1 egg
1 slice bread, crust removed and torn into small pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon pepper
olive oil for sautéing

Combine all of the ingredients in a small bowl, and knead for a minute or two. Roll the meat into 16 small meatballs. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet. Place the meatballs in the hot oil and brown on all sides. Remove the meatballs and transfer to the sauce. Simmer the meatballs in the sauce for 1/2 hour. If the sauce becomes too thick add water or broth until desired consistency.

To complete the dish:
1/2 pound ziti grated Pecorino Romano Cheese
crushed hot pepper

Cook the ziti in plenty of boiling water until al dente. Drain the pasta then transfer to a large bowl. Pour the sauce and meatballs over the pasta; toss until combined. Serve while hot with grated cheese and crushed red pepper.


Lebanese-Style Rice with Vermicelli and Kibbeh Meatballs

Yield: 4 servings

3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 small onion, diced
2 ounces vermicelli, broken into 1-inch pieces
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cumin
3/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups long grain rice
3 cups hot chicken broth
1 recipe kibbeh (recipe follows)
1/4 cup minced parsley
plain yogurt for garnish

In a heavy skillet combine the olive oil, onion, and vermicelli. Place the pan over medium heat and cook, while stirring, until the onion and vermicelli begin to brown. Add the garlic, cinnamon, allspice, cumin, and salt; cook another minute, taking care not to burn the pasta or garlic. Stir in the rice, coating it with the oil and spices, then the chicken broth. Add the kibbeh, submerging them in the liquid. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Stir in the parsley just before serving, and garnish with yogurt.

Kibbeh Meatballs

1/2 cup medium bulgur wheat
3/4 pound boneless lamb, diced
1/2 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

Place the bulgur in a bowl, cover with warm water and leave to soak for 10 minutes. Drain and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Place the bulgur along with the rest of the ingredients in a food processor and process for 20 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then process for another 20 or 30 seconds, or until a smooth paste. Remove the meat from the bowl, shape into small balls and refrigerate.

Now imagine the time before even meat grinders, which were invented in the early 1800s. At that time cooking took real ingenuity. Not to say that today it doesn’t (I’ve always thought that the biggest part of cooking is not necessarily technical skill but common sense), but back then you really had to think things through. The simplest cooking tasks took more thought, but mostly more effort. Knowing how to tenderize meat, for example, would have been a necessary ability for a cook.

There are a few ways to tenderize meat without a grinder. One is to cook it for a long period of time at low heat. Another is to mince into very small pieces. A third method, albeit a more gruesome one, is to pound and smash the hell out of it, literally mashing it into a paste and breaking down any connective tissue. While today it can be done in a few seconds with the push of a button, pounding meat to a paste once took much time and effort. Nonetheless, it seems to have been a popular method among early cooks, and is the origin of our beloved meatball.

Meat was not always plentiful as it is now, nor was it the “center of the plate,” meaning the biggest thing on the plate; it was often a garnish or flavoring, and more often than not considered a luxury. Thus, utilizing less expensive and exceedingly tough cuts of meat was not an option; it was just something you did. Meatballs were, and still are, a great way to use less desirable cuts of meat.

Virtually every ethnic group has some form of meatball in its culinary repertoire. Names change from language to language and recipes are altered to incorporate geographic differences. In the Middle East, for example, where lamb is plentiful; in China they’re made from pork; and in America they’re of course made with beef.

Tenderizing meat in this fashion it did two things. First, the meat became palatable. Second, you could mash other ingredients into the meat to “stretch it,” creating more meat. With our nation’s wealth and plentiful meat supply today, meatballs are something of a nostalgic delicacy; the necessity of their origin is all but forgotten—a way to make due with what you had, to make a small and tough cut of meat taste good, and to make a small amount of meat go a little further. The ingredients that were (and still are) emulsified into meat are any number of starches, such as bread, rice, potato, or in the Middle East—which is probably the birthplace of meatballs—bulgur.

A popular Lebanese dish is kibbeh, an emulsified paste of lamb and bulgur wheat. It’s a versatile recipe that can be cooked in a tray, made into ovals and stuffed or into patties and fried. It’s even eaten raw, like steak tartar. Think of kibbeh as a sort of Lebanese paté. Originally, it was made by pounding lamb and bulgur with a mortar and pestle. Apparently this can be an unpleasant sight. The late English food writer George Lassalle, in his book East of Orphanides: My Middle Eastern Food, describes kibbeh-making in the rural villages as frightening. He found the incessant pounding and kneading both “dreary and alarming.” Today, of course, the food processor has all but replaced the mortar and pestle.

Pulverizing meat with another ingredient (and some of its own fat) renders the meat downright silken in texture. The highest (or should I say trés haute) recipe that utilizes this technique is the French pâté, which not surprisingly translates to English as “paste.” Taking its name literally is a little less romantic. A fancy-sounding recipe such as pâté de foie gras reads as “a paste of fattened liver.” Pâté du maison is “paste of the house.” Meatloaf then, which is really meatball mix baked in the form of a loaf, is the original poor-person’s pâté. But I’m getting off track.

As mentioned, populations globe-wide have meatballs in their cuisines. While many foods have distinct and often recorded histories, these little balls of meat do not. Language itself may offer us some clues, however, and the clues point east, to Persia, or present day Iran. Throughout the Middle and Near East the word kofta is used to describe a recipe for ground and seasoned meat. Sometimes it’s served skewered and grilled, other times it’s in the form of a small ball or patty and fried or cooked into rice or stewed in a sauce. It’s believed that the word kofta comes from the Persian word koofteh, which means pounded meat. Some believe that this is where the method of pounding and seasoning meat first began. From there the recipes spread far and wide.

So how did the meatball end up in America and reinvent itself as an Italian-American staple? I have not found any solid documentation on this. But the most obvious speculation is that the recipe was carried first with traders to North Africa, then to Sicily and mainland Italy, where it was incorporated into local cuisines, possibly as far back as the Roman Empire. The spices were probably changed to herbs because of both preference and geographic location, and the name changed too, from kofta to polpette, later to be known in America simply as meatballs. And this is something for which I am truly thankful, because a plate of pasta, meatballs, and tomato sauce is one of my favorites.

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