Polpettine al Limone ala Veronica
“We never eat spaghetti and meatballs,” Veronica informs us with a sophisticated wrinkle of her nose. But the Italians have meatballs in a million other ways. Veronica’s constantly claims that her cooking is “everyday” cooking where with a few simple techniques you can make many different dishes. With this meatball she suggest you also cook and serve the meatballs with a tomato sauce (just not over noodles) or stuff in a pepper. I could handle these a few times a week…
1 lb ground beef (with some bologna mixed in if you can get the butcher to do it- otherwise 1/2 ground pork is great too).
3-4 slices stale (not dry) bread
Milk
1-2 eggs
Grated nutmeg
2 heaping Tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (they never use anything but)
Salt
Lemons
2 Tablespoons butter
Flour
Parsley
Saturate the slices of bread with water (about 2 cups) mixed with milk (about ½ cup) in a bowl.
Put the ground meat, eggs, and nutmeg in another bowl. Squeeze the fluid out of the bread until you have a handful of soggy breadcrumbs in your hand to sprinkle on top of the meat. Mix and make meatballs the size of a golf ball. Sprinkle them (or roll them) in flour. In a heavy saucepan melt the butter with the olive oil and sauté´ over medium heat.
When the meatballs are almost done, add the lemon and salt to the pan and cook slowly until done. The butter and lemon will make a nice creamy sauce. Serve with green peas.
Veronica’s quote for today?
“My cooking is simple because when we make things too complicated we only make it once- it gets too tiring. And never ccok when you are tired. It won’t come out right.”
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