Pseudo-Italian meatballs
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Why do I call them pseudo-italian? Because I recently watched a friend from Italy make meatballs. But I didn’t watch very closely – so I remembered some of the ingredients, and had a general idea of how he did it. But I’ve certainly screwed up somewhere when I tried to do them myself.
Anyway, here goes. This is what you need:
- beef mince (will have to try this with lamb mince sometime)
- grated parmesan cheese
- soft butter
- an egg
- diced bacon
- bread crumbs
- salt, pepper
- garlic
- canned tomatos
- olive oil
- Thoroughly mix the mince, bacon, parmesan, salt, pepper, butter and the egg. Form small meatballs and roll them in bread crumbs.
- Heat olive oil in a pan. Fry the meatballs on all sides.
- Add the canned tomatos and some water.
- Crush the garlic and add it to the tomato sauce.
- Cook for 20-30 minutes, adding water as needed. Add salt, pepper and herbs at your discretion. Serve with pasta, gnocchi, risotto, whatever.
My Italian friend is probably disgusted now because I butchered his recipe so badly.
Update: My Italian friend informs me that one uses cooked ham instead of bacon in this recipe. And that one needs to add smoked cheese (I think he used scamorza.) I tried this variation yesterday, and I am sorry to report that I like the version above better – I don’t care very much for the smoked cheese, and I think the bacon lends a bit of flavour.