Meatballs

So, apparently under the influence of the moon, the stars, the record hot weather and two bottles of really excellent wine out on the patio Wednesday night, I apparently volunteered to make dinner Friday night.  Since my repertoire is limited to scrambled eggs and spaghetti, the latter looked like the obvious choice.  It seemed only fair since Cindy does all the cooking and needs a break from it every now and then.

However, my reckless mood of volunteering also allegedly included making meatballs.  I've never made meatballs in my life, but Cindy loves meatballs so I thought I'd give it a try.  The thought of making meatballs was intimidating, but Cindy had a good recipe for a meatball sandwich which turned out to be within my limited capabilities.

1 pound lean ground beef
4 pieces French bread or grinder rolls (whatever those are), each 5 inches long
1 egg, beaten to blend
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt, or less
hot-pepper sauce, as desired (it wasn't, so I didn't--there are some advantages to being the cook)


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, then bake the meatballs for 30 minutes.  

It seemed pretty straightforward.

At Cindy's suggestion, I used panko breadcrumbs instead of the french bread and dried diced onion instead of the chopped onion, adding about a tablespoon of beef stock to the panko crumbs and the dried onion so they could soak up the stock before adding them to the other ingredients.

The parsley was nearly my downfall, though.  I went out and picked some out of the garden, but found that my "knife skills", as they call it on Top Chef, were nearly nonexistent.  It looks so smooth and easy on Top Chef; chopchopchopchopchopchop, and done, all in finely chopped, uniform pieces.   I hacked away at that parsley with the ulu for way too long and I don't think any two pieces were the same size, but at least I eventually had about a tablespoon of the parsley and added it to the other ingredients.

I'd never make it on Top Chef, but the meatballs came out well, as did the spaghetti and the salad Cindy made, and the whole dinner was delicious.  Now she's intimating that it would be nice for me to do this once a month, although it may take a lot more wine for me to get to that point.