Swedish Meatballs

The Recipe

3/4 cup bread crumbs (unseasoned)
1 cup cream, divided
1 onion, medium-finely chopped
1 egg
1 lb. ground beef
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp (generous) ground allspice
2 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. flour
1 1/2 cups milk

Stir 1/2 cup of cream into bread crumbs in a large bowl. Let sit 5 min. Add the onion, egg, ground beef, salt & allspice. Combine with your hands (this will not be easy, since the breadcrumbs are now like cement, but you'll get it.) and shape into meatballs*.

Melt butter in skillet over med-hi heat. Add the meatballs in two batches and brown; remove to plate. Sprinkle flour over pan drippings and stir to form roux, making sure to scrape up brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add remaining cream and milk, whisking continuously. Bring up to boil; add meatballs and reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes or so. Serve over noodles. Easily feeds a family of four with leftovers for lunch.

The Story

This is not for the weak of heart or the high of cholesterol. Only have this dish twice a year, even if your health is good. Savor it like crazy when you do.

This is a (very slight) variation of a recipe from "Many Hands Cooking: An International Cookbook for Girls and Boys" by Terry Touff Cooper and Marilyn Ratner. I started my cooking career young, since my parents hated to cook and I showed some promise in it. I made all sorts of ghastly things involving hot dogs, frozen vegetables and canned soup that my folks and I found in pamphlets and on the backs of boxes & cans. Rarely was fresh food involved. When I was ten, my grandmother bought this cookbook for me for Christmas; I quickly found recipes that we would eat (Dad was picky) and went to town. These meatballs are among the best.

The sad thing is, I never got to thank my grandmother. She was the kind of person who bought gifts well in advance of holidays. She bought this book for me for Christmas, but she died in the summer and it was given to me when her house was cleaned out.

Thanks, Grandma.

Last year, at a library book sale I found the sequel "Many Friends Cooking" by the same two authors. I snatched it up immediately. I haven't made anything from it yet, but maybe it's time to teach my oldest to cook more things...

One thing that I have changed is I now cook with organic butter/meat/cream/milk. Unfortunately, the organic label doesn't change the fact that this dish has enough saturated fat in it to suggest you should put a cardiologist on speed-dial. Man, though, as a splurge- it is yummy.

*note on meatball size: I always made these too big. Swedish meatballs are usually small, cocktail size meatballs, but I'd make them the size of meatballs you'd find with spaghetti. My mother even went so far as to buy me a scoop to try to make them the small size. I never did it. I still don't. Make 'em as big as you want.

Seared Cajun Spiced Pork Tenderloin with Andouie Gravy and Celery Root Mashed Potatoes

The Recipe

Gravy:

6 Tbsp. canola or veg. oil
6 Tbsp. flour
1 cup minced red bell pepper
½ cup minced onion
½ cup minced celery
3 cups chicken stock
4 oz fully cooked Andouie sausage, chopped into ¼ in. dice
pinch cayenne (watch- Andouie may be hot!)
2 Tbsp chopped parsley

Heat oil over med. heat; whisk in flour to form roux; cook over med-low heat to medium brown, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. Be very careful not to let it burn. Add vegetables and sauté 3 minutes. Gradually whisk in broth. Add sausage and cayenne; simmer 5 minutes more. Can be set aside at this point until the pork is done. Rewarm and add parsley just before serving.

Potatoes:

A 1 ½ lb. celeriac (aka celery root) cut into 1/2 in dice
3 lb. russet potatoes cut into 1 in dice
10 oz butter
4 oz. half and half or buttermilk
Kosher Salt and pepper, TT

Cook celeriac in boiling salted water for 5 min. Then add potatoes, cook until done, about 20 more minutes. Drain, and return to warm pot for 2 min to dry vegetables. Mash until smooth; lightly mix in butter and half and half, S&P to taste.

Pork:

2 ½ lb. pork tenderloin (at least two)
1 1/2 Tbsp. dried Thyme
1 1/2 Tbsp. ground coriander
1 1/2 Tbsp. cumin
Kosher Salt and cracked Pepper
¼ cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 400. Mix spices; Salt & Pepper the pork. Dredge pork with spices, set aside. Heat oil in oven proof skillets. Sear tenderloins to a good golden brown on all sides, about 5 minutes per side. Put skillets in oven at 400; roast pork until reaches internal 140, about 10 minutes. Let rest while rewarming gravy. Slice thinly, and serve with mashed potatoes and gravy.

Serves 8 as a main course

The Story

You will love this. Oh, yes, you will. We're trying to eat less meat so I haven't made it in a while, and now I'm dreaming of it. Wonder if pork tenderloin is on sale this week...

Be careful- a pork tenderloin is not a pork loin. The tenderloins are often sold in cryovac packages and weigh between 1 and 1 1/2 lbs each. They usually require very little trimming once opened, but if you see any silverskin or fat lumps you should clean it up.

Celeriac (or Celery Root) is a knobby, bumpy root you can find in the produce section. If your supermarket doesn't have it, you can substitute more potatoes. You can lower the fat in the mashed potatoes by using buttermilk instead of the half and half- gives a nice tang to the potatoes.

Meatballs El Rancho

The Recipe:

1 lb. ground beef
1/4 cup Penzey's Taco Seasoning Mix OR 1 packet Taco seasoning
2 cans Campbell's Beef gravy
1 Tbsp. minced dried onions
1 can LeSeur baby carrots, well drained
3 slices American cheese, cut on a diagonal
Egg noodles

Mix taco seasoning into ground beef and shape into small meatballs. Heat skillet over med-high heat; brown meatballs on all sides. (Depending on the amount of fat in your ground beef, this shouldn't be a problem to not add oil, but if you want to, lightly oil the skillet first.) Drain any fat. Add the cans of gravy and the minced dried onions. Bring up to a boil and reduce to a simmer; cook maybe 10 minutes so the meatballs are cooked through.

While you're doing this is a good time to bring the water for the noodles up to a boil. Once you've added your noodles, you've got 6-8 minutes, and it's time to move back to the meatballs.

Add the drained carrots to the gravy. Stir, then push the meatballs out toward the outside of the skillet. Put the cheese on top of the gravy around the outside, cover and let melt on the lowest possible heat while your noodles finish. Serve over noodles.

Makes dinner for 4.

The Story:

This is even less healthy than the Candied Corned Beef, if that's possible. We make it very, very rarely. Between the saturated fat and the salt, don't eat this very often but enjoy it when you do. I guess you could make yourself feel better by having a big ol' salad with it, if you must.

Meatballs El Rancho is as kid-friendly as a meal gets. My kids routinely ask for it for their birthday dinners. It's such comfort food and is one of the few happy food memories I have of growing up.

This one is an old family recipe completely corrupted from an old 1960's pamphlet for new wives. The pamplet even says "Yesterday a bride, today a homemaker!" My parents were able to take this recipe and remove all of the fresh vegetables from it, thus rendering it easier and less healthy. But, boy, is it tasty.

Alice's Spicy Baked Corned Beef

The Recipe:

4 lb. Boneless corn beef
1 Tbsp. pickling spices
1 carrot
1 stalk of celery
1 onion, quartered

Add all ingredients to pot. Simmer 3 hours. Preheat oven to 350. Remove corned beef (but leave liquid in pot), trim off as much fat as you want. Put corned beef in a 9x9 glass baking dish.

Mix together:

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp. mustard (don't bother w/dijon, brown mustard works fine)

Spread on top of corned beef. Pour

1/2 cup sweet pickle juice (or fruit juice, or half dill pickle juice and half canned fruit syrup)

into the pan. Bake for 1 hour, basting every 10 minutes with the liquid in the pan.

While the corned beef is baking, scoop the spent vegetables & spices out of the pot on the stove and throw them away. Bring it up to a boil; then add as many as you want of the following at the appropriate times to get them done like you like:

potatoes, unpeeled, preferably red skinned & cut in half- 30-20 minutes cooking, depending on size
carrots, cut into 1 inch lengths- 15 minutes cooking time
cabbage, cut into quarters, 10-15 minutes cooking time

The Story:

This is my family's recipe and evokes memories of Sunday dinners of long ago. I researched it for a class in cooking school, only to find out that instead of it being a good Irish Corn Beef recipe, its origins are Jewish and it most likely came from a magazine. Oh, well.

It's about as unhealthy as food can get- candied, salted commercially-produced beef- so don't eat it often, but enjoy it when you do. It's lick-the-cutting board good.