The craving hit me out of nowhere.
I needed meatballs. I needed to stop what I was doing and make them immediately.
I had three kinds of ground meat in the fridge from the farmers' market on Sunday and just pulled this recipe together based on what I already had here at home. Much to my surprise and delight, these exceeded any expectation I had and completely blew me away.
I hope you love them as much as I do.
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Meatballs You Will Pine For
Preheat oven to 400F/204C.
3 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
6-8 stalks chard, stems removed, leaves chopped or julienned
1/2 C pine nuts
1 T olive oil
1 T butter
Heat butter and olive oil in saute pan over medium-high heat. Toss in shallots, then pine nuts, then garlic, then chard. Cook over low heat, stirring gently, until chard is slightly limp. Remove from heat.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine:
3 C bread (torn from whole pieces; I used Ener-G gluten-free tapioca bread)
2 C whole or 2% milk
Let bread soak up milk (should take a minute or two).
In a large mixing bowl, combine:
1 lb. ground veal
1 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground beef
3 eggs, lightly whisked/beaten
1 C freshly grated parmagiano-reggiano
2 T pineapple sage, finely chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
Before mixing everything with your hands, squeeze the milk from the bread and toss the bread in the bowl. Then, add the chard-shallot-pine-nut-garlic mixture. Now, get in there and mix everything together with your hands until all the ingredients are incorporated. If you are squeamish and even think about trying to mix this with a spoon or some other utensil, I am going to leap through the computer and slap you silly. The only thing that works here is your hands. Trust me.
Roll into 1" balls.
Bake on a Silpat-lined baking sheet for 20 minutes.
Should make 64 glorious balls of meaty deliciousness.
I ended up eating six of them straight from the baking sheet, a minute or two after they came out of the oven. I could've eaten a dozen or more, they were that good. WOW. I didn't even bother with a plate. Fork to baking sheet to spear meatball, fork to mouth. Repeat. Often.
The chard and pine nuts add a nice texture, and the meat was cooked perfectly. While I love onion, I didn't have any here at the house, and the shallots were even better than the onion could have been. They're a little sweeter, and a little less onion-y, so the shallot flavor complemented everything else. The garlic adds a nice blip and the chard makes me feel like I'm eating my vegetables with my meat -- besides which, it, along with the parm-reg, adds a little nutty flavor.
After downing six of them straight away, I wondered: I wonder if any of the condiments I have in the fridge might make these even better?
Clockwise from the top: Plain old meatball, ketchup, honey mustard, horseradish, Sriracha sauce, BLiS maple syrup.I love ketchup on my meatloaf, so ketchup on a meatball is a no-brainer. The honey mustard was surprisingly good. The horseradish? Meh. The Sriracha? FANTASTIC. But the maple syrup????? Off the freakin' charts. And, it makes me think I can now have these bad boys for breakfast, too. A little meatball with some maple syrup? Peace out pancakes... who needs ya?
