Meatball Sedation

Presently enamoured by Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the lighthouse’.   There is a dinner party scene where interactions amongst the guests are patently strained which include a misanthrope who would rather be eating alone than engaged in ‘silly’ banter, a painter who can not wait to the morning to paint a magnificent landscape she’s creating in her head, a host visibly offended that a guest has helped himself to a second bowl of soup, a hostess at her wits end trying to merge these disparate parties to create a sense of bon homie. …But then the main course, the Boef en Daube arrives and suddenly there is animation in the room, the hostess feels revived and the guests are quietly enraptured.  Well this is analogous to the reception this dish received when served for dinner.  Prior there was bedlam at the dinner table with children bickering and a harassed father trying to subdue them.  But tout a coup, once the meatballs and spaghetti were served there was a collective hush.  It was devoured within minutes.

It’s  very nourishing, uncomplicated in flavour and guaranteed to please the fussiest eaters and tame the wildest recalcitrant.   This is from Nigella’s How to Eat.  Serves plenty.

 

For the meatballs

1 onion

2 tbs oil

4 slices stale white bread, crusts removed and broken into pieces

200ml milk

1 kg minced beef (or combination of veal and pork)

2 beaten eggs

4 tbs grated parmesan

1 heaped tbs chopped fresh parsley

Flour

For the sauce

2 tbs olive oil

1 tbs butter

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 carrot

1 stick celery

1 tsp cinnamon

2 heaped tbs dried oregano

2 tbs red wine or apple juice

3 x 400g tins best quality tomatoes

3 bay leaves

200ml milk

….

Chop onion very finely and fry it in 1 tbs oil for about 10 mins, sprinkled with salt, till golden and soft.  Place in a large bowl.  Cover bread with meal in a dish and leave till soaked (about 10 mins).

Now for the sauce.  Blitz onion, garlic, carrot and celery in a processor then fry in a large saucepan in butter and oil.   Once soft and stew-like, add wine/apple juice with cinnamon, oregano, bay and 2.5 tins of the tomato.  Push around saucepan with wooden spoon till tomato disintegrates.  Season with salt and pepper.  Cook for about 20 mins add milk then another 10 mins by which time it will have become a sweet tomatoey melody.

In the meantime, place minced meat in the bowl with cooked onion.  Add bread which has been squeezed of excess milk. Then the beaten eggs, the parmesan, the cooked onion, the parsley and salt and pepper.  Mix well with your hands.

Spread a large surface with flour and have 2 large plates ready.  Using your hands shape into walnut-sized balls and roll about in the flour and place on the plates.  Makes about 46 meatballs.

Heat about 1 tbs of oil in  a non-stick frying pan (you will indubitably need to add more oil as you go along) and brown the meatballs in batches.  Spoon the browned ones into the large pot containing the sauce. When you’ve done them all, throw the remaining ½ tin of tomatoes into the frypan in which you’ve been browning the meatballs, then pour on top of the meatballs in sauce.  Cook in the sauce for about 20 -30 mins covered, till cooked through.  Remove bay leaves and toss through a huge bowl of cooked spaghetti.  Or alternatively serve with cooked rice.  And enjoy it’s sedating effect……