The best meatball recipe ever!

January 8, 2017 We've had a week of the new year and no recipe. Or, more accurately, no “how-to.” Because I think recipes get in the way but I DO believe in explaining how to cook something. The problem with recipes is that you feel so obligated. 1 # of ground beef….well, what if you don’t have ground beef but you have ground pork? 1 red onion….well, what if you don’t have red onions but you just bought a sack of white ones? And what if your garden is bursting with, say, oregano or sage or basil but it’s not in the recipe? So my how-to is just an outline of what you can do with the basic ingredients. You might try it exactly as it is written the first time, then add or subtract flavors you don’t like. The only real demand, at least for MY kitchen, is that the ingredients are traceable back to the farmer's hands. I want beef from my neighbor, onions from the farm across the county that I meet at the farmers’ market, eggs from my other neighbor and bread crumbs from the organic bakery that my daughter helped start. So, since I began the year with meatballs, here’s the how-to, a recipe that serves four, but is very forgiving. You can double it, triple it...and freeze your meatballs in a freezer bag for another meal: 1# ground beef (or pork, lamb, turkey) (if you don’t have a farmer, trust your butcher!) 1 egg (again, labels don’t mean much—find a farmer) ¼ medium-size red onion (if you have white or yellow, go ahead and substitute!) ½ cup bread crumbs (ONLY from a baker you trust. Ask where the flour came from!) Chop or dice the onion as fine as humanly possible and do the same with the bread. Sometimes I dry the bread out in the oven, then grate it with a cheese grater. If I’m making a lot, I’ll chop the onions in a food processor, take them out, then chop the bread in the same processor. Sometimes I just crumble slices of bread, making sure there are no chunks more than about 1/4” in any dimension. Next, put the ground beef into a bowl that will hold all the ingredients. Break up the ground beef and it will be easier to mix the other ingredients. Then, break the egg in, add the onion and bread crumbs and mush it all together. If you’re squeamish about mushing things together, or if you’ve just had a manicure, put on disposable gloves for this part. When well-mushed, take a meatball-sized chunk and roll it into a ball. I usually like my meatballs about 2” in diameter, but sometimes I want tiny meatballs, so I make them smaller. Whatever you decide, put the meatball on a baking sheet. Repeat until all the meat is rolled into tidy little balls and ready to go into the oven. Pop it into the oven, set the oven at 350 (don’t worry about pre-heating for this) and leave them for about 10 minutes. Check after 10 minutes. When they’re brown, pull them out. You might like spaghetti sauce but I like meatballs in a cream sauce, which you can make in the 10 minutes you’re waiting for the meat balls. The sauce recipe for this many meatballs is 2-2-2. In other words: 2 T. olive oil or butter; 2 T. flour (I use organic whole wheat from the mill in my county); and 2 cups milk. Heat the oil or butter, add the flour and stir in to make a paste (called “roux” and pronounced “roo”) and add the milk a little at a time, stirring it into the roux. When it’s all blended, turn down the heat and let it stay warm. And, oh yeah, bring on the noodles—the big fat kind from the noodle-maker at the farmers’ market. Just boil a big pot of water and drop them in for about 15 minutes. Pull a noodle out every so often to test for doneness. That’s good eating!