Special Supper

A few days ago K asked if we could have meatballs for supper.  Me: Sure.  Would you like them with rice or noodles?  K: Noodles please.  Me: And tomato sauce?  K: Oh sure.


And there you have it, my 3 year old making his first request for a "special" meal.  That's not counting the nearly daily requests for a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch & supper.  If ever he had a favourite food, grilled cheese would be it.  I wonder what got into his head and distracted him from his beloved grilled cheese?  No matter, we hadn't had either for quite some time so I was happy to oblige him.

My goto tomato sauce is from Mario Batali's Molto Italiano.  You can find it here.  It really is all kinds of awesome.  I really have only made one change to his recipe: I puree it.  Velvety smooth deliciousness.  From the time she was an infant, P has gobbled this sauce up.  Her favourite was is rice.  Pureed first, before she could chew, and then straight up.  K, while liking the sauce has never cared for it over rice.  Oh well.

I use my food processor to chop the onions and carrots because it's faster than doing it by hand and it speeds up the cooking a little when the pieces are smaller.  And I love me a kitchen appliance.  I got a little carried away with the carrots this time so this is actually more like a tomato and carrot sauce.  Regardless, it was delicious.

Next came the meatballs.  I decided to use a friend's mother's recipe.  They are from her very first cookbook when she got married 40ish years ago. I did modify the original recipe slightly, only to accommodate the what I had on hand.

Mmmm Meatballs
Made 50 medium 

1 pound lean ground beef

1 pound ground turkey

1 ½ cups soft bread crumbs (3 slices of bread)* 

½ cup milk

¼ cup finely chopped onion

2 eggs

1 ½ teaspoons salt

Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly.  Shape into balls as best you can.  It'll be very sticky and a little hard to work with.  Persevere, they're worth it!

Bake at 375F for 25 to 30 min.  Can be frozen raw or cooked.  I've done both.  Can't report on the ones I've frozen cooked yet.  We need a bit of a meatball break before having at them again.

* The first time I made these we cut white bread into small cubes.  This time I didn't have any nice bread for bread crumbs so I used dry bread crumbs and soaked them in milk.  I really mean soaked.  I think I ended up using about 1 c of milk in total.