Tivo and Meatballs

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Ok, so I have to take back what I wrote about the French not having Tivo yet. They do. It’s just that Dman didn’t realize we had it on our DIGITAL TV system. I found it by accident today as I was looking through the on-screen guide FOR THE FIRST TIME and immediately discovered that we have the ability to record shows. Aargh… Swimming, diving and gymnastics are almost all over now.

Lesson for the ladies: Do not trust that your mates have ANY clue when it comes to the electronics in the house. Even if they pretend to.

Now that I’ve got a good handle on making spaghetti sauce from scratch, I decided to tackle meatballs because spaghetti and meatballs has to be one of my all-time favorite foods. There’s something about ground meat that I’ve always loved and when I was a veggie, that was the hardest thing for me to give up.

Anyway, this is a recipe I tried the other day and it turned out really well.

Maggie’s Easy Meatballs (modified from an NYTimes recipe):

1 lb. of ground beef
1/2 c. of grated Parmesan
3/4-1 c. of fine breadcrumbs
A few tablespoons of fresh herbs, finely chopped (basil, cilantro, mint, parsley—what you like and/or what you have in the house)
1 clove of minced garlic
Half an onion, minced
Salt and pepper, to taste (I just sort of eyed it)
Pinch or dash of cayenne pepper
1 egg

Mix everything together with your hands. I just used one hand because it kind of grosses me out to touch raw meat (from the veggie days). Just mix enough to make sure everything’s incorporated. You don’t want to over-mix because I think it makes for tough meatballs or something.

Take a chunk of meat and roll it into a ball in between your palms. You can wet your hands to make the ball-forming easier. Again, don’t over-roll or over-compress. You want to make a ball that will won’t fall apart but not one that’s too dense. I made small/medium balls, like an inch to two inches in diameters.

Heat up a skillet, coating it with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Put in the meatballs, but don’t overfill the pan. Brown all the sides of the ball, but leave it a little pink in the center. Drain them on a plate covered with paper towels.

Add to the spaghetti sauce and let the sauce cook for at least another 20 minutes to make sure the meatballs are cooked through.

Serve over spaghetti. This recipe makes about 12 meatballs.

The Sad Aftermath of My Spaghetti and Meatballs Triumph:

We had enough left over for lunch the next day so Dman and I got ourselves good and hungry and prepared everything. Pasta al dente. Check. Heat up the sauce and meatballs. Check. Cover everything with even more parmesan. Check.

Well, Dman put the food in a glass bowl that we bought at Ikea which had a small crack in it. As I was just about to set the bowl down, it literally broke apart in my hand. Spaghetti, meatballs, sauce and glass went flying everywhere! It was a real disaster.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad before to not be able to eat something. I felt like that kid whose favorite ice cream plopped to the ground before he even got a lick in. And to add injury to disappointment, a piece of glass cut my foot!

Lesson for everyone: If you crack cheap glass even a little bit, just throw it away. Especially if it only cost a euro fifty at Ikea.

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Filed under Cooking, Food & Drink, Life, Paris & France, TV

Tags: beef, breadcrumbs, broken glass, digital TV recording, egg, electronics, garlic, herbs, Ikea, Italian meatball recipe, Olympics, onion, Paris & France, Parmesan, spaghetti sauce, Tivo, veggie