Dec. 9, 2006 - Multiple Offers and Meatballs
We are submitting an offer tomorrow on a property in Seattle that will likely have MEGA offers. My estimate is 15-20 or more. Since this MAY be an exercise in futility, given someone else may be willing to overpay for it...and we and our clients are not...we decided to have the clients over for dinner. If nothing else comes out of it, at least the kids will be fed :-) So for the little boy of the group, I decided meatballs and spaghetti and my partner Kim is preparing mac and cheese on the side...just in case.
When there are going to be MEGA offers, you don't want to let the offer out of your hands until just before they are going to be considered. So, in the meantime, we are going to have meatballs and spaghetti before signing the offer. Gives me more time to make sure the buyers have really thought about their offer from every aspect, before I type it during dessert.
Since everyone loves my meatballs, and I really don't have a recipe, as I can make them in my sleep, I thought I'd jot down the recipe here as I'm making them. If for no other reason than for my own daugters to have "the recipe". Ingredients are in this size print so I don't have to list that separately. Don't use "Italian seasoning". There is one spice in there that is really only for Pizza (oregano), and not for pasta, so don't assume "Italian Seasoning" is appropriate for anything other than pizza type dishes.
You start with ground beef. This is the "child approved" version, and so has no pork or veal...just plain old ground beef. Take out one egg per pound, averaging down. 2.5 lbs equals two eggs. 3.2 lbs equals three eggs. One egg per pound of meat, averaging down to the round number and excluding the fraction. You can use plain bread crumbs or seasoned bread crumbs. Doesn't really matter as I still season it the same either way. You need more parsley flakes anyway. I've never measured anything in this recipe except to know the egg to meat proportion, so I'll have to measure as I go. I have a package of ground beef that is 2.46 lbs, so I've taken out two eggs, bread crumbs (seasoned) and parsley flakes so far. These are the "must haves" to make meatballs, so don't start until you know you have these things on hand. The rest you will have...or can live without.
Always break up your eggs first with a whisk in the bowl, before you do anything with the meat. Add the seasonings to the eggs to avoid big patches of clumped seasoning in one meatball. I added 1/4 cup of parsley flakes to the eggs and am letting that sit so the dry flakes soften. Another way is to crush the flakes into the eggs using both hands rubbing back and forth to break up the flakes. I usually do that, but I'm measuring, making and typing all at the same time here...so I skipped that step to avoid parsley flakes in my keyboard.
Next we add 1/4 cup of grated (not shredded) cheese. I like locatelli or pecorino romano, but parmesan will do in a pinch. Locatelli you can get from Borrichini's (I think that's how you spell it) and it's normally a dry mix that lasts very long in your fridge. Pecorino Romano I get from Trader Joe's, when they have it, but Trader Joe's is a little too purist and I've had it turn green too fast, so better to buy a chunk and grate it yourself as needed or get it within a few days of making the meatballs. Parmesan...go for it...no advice there, as I rarely use it and am not sure how that particular cheese got so popular for making all Italian dishes in America.
Seasonings. Two shakes of regular ground pepper. Three turns of ground black peppercorns. Alessi makes a grate little product that you can find in the spice section of your grocery store, that is a glass jar of peppercorns with it's own build in grinder as the cap! Fabulous! Two generous shakes of garlic powder (NOT garlic SALT!) No salt in the meatballs!! The salt is in the pasta water, not in the meatballs. That's really an old James Beard thing...never salt your meat when you cook it. Only at the table. If you want salty meatballs, sprinkle that on your plate on your meatballs, but the cook should never salt beef, whether it's meatballs, hamburgers or steak. I forget why...but James Beard said so, and while I don't always agree with him...I decided 30 years ago to follow his advice on the whole don't salt the beef thing.
I've never measured any of this and measuring bread crumbs seems a bit sacrilegious, even as I do it, but I'm starting with 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs added directly to the eggs. I've added two tablespoons of water. My Mom totally freaks out if you don't add two tablespoons of water to the bread crumbs. She insists that those meatballs some people make that are like rubber and that you can bounce off the walls, come out that way because of this whole two tablespoons of water thing. So I just put in two tablespoons of water to make my Mom happy. Now you add the ground beef to the egg mixture. Eventually you will have to get your hands in there, but I could never get my kids to put their hands in there while the eggs were this runny. So for those who are equally grossed out by putting their hands in runny eggs, just mix the meat in with the seasoned egg mixture with a meat fork or large fork (not spoon) of any kind. I had to ditch the fork and get my hands in there to figure out the bread crumb measurement for you. You have to know what it's supposed to feel like at the end to know how much bread crumbs you need...so since I'm measuring for the first time, I've got to get my hands in there.
Add a second 1/4 cup of bread crumbs, mix them in, and then add a third 1/4 cup of bread crumbs (that's 3/4 cup of bread crumbs all together). It's important to mix the bread crumbs in gradually to avoid clumps of bread crumbs. You toss the bread crumbs on top of th meat, then you lift the meat and shake the excess that doesn't stick to the meat into the bowl underneath and lay the uncrumbed side of the meat back down into the bowl. You mix what sticks into the meat and repeat this process by turning the meat into the dry crumbs until all of the crumbs are in the meat...and then you do it all again with that last 1/4 cup of crumbs.
Now you fry them on a high fire in olive oil to thoroughly brown the outside of the meatballs, moving them around constantly so the meatballs stay round and don't go flat on one side. When they are brown on the outside (not cooked in the middle-it's not a round hamburger) you drain them on a paper towel to remove the excess oil and fat rolling them to remove as much oil and fat as possible and then drop them into your pasta sauce to cook for at least an hour before your company arrives. You never put the pasta in the pot until you see the whites of the eyes of the dinner guests! Cooking the meatballs in the pasta sauce will season your sauce.
If the pasta sauce changes from red to brown by the time it is done...then you will understand why we Italians call our pasta sauce "gravy".
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