Winter Soup For A Summer Cold

Summer colds can sure be aggravating. Just ask me and my hubby. One sneaked (snuck?) up on us recently when we were least expecting it. It's not exactly "cold and flu season" you know? This is summer for Pete's sake: pool parties, fruity drinks, and sunscreen.

The traditional comforts that we cling to during a cold bout seem so very out of place this time of year: snuggly warm socks and blankets... hot lemon and honey drinks... big bowls of soup. It's 85 degrees outside... for cryin' out loud. Talk about feeling "under the weather".

Popovers Filled with Beef and Leek Stew

I'll sometimes describe a dish as being much more than the sum of its parts. That can be said about lots of foods really, though it's most impressive when there are very few parts to the equation in the first place.

Last night I made one of our favorite budget-friendly dinners, a three-ingredient wonder that never fails to render us both into silent, ravenous reverie. Just three ingredients, including the roast. That's right, including the roast. There's a pinch of flour, a splash of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, but really it all comes down to three ingredients... chuck, leeks, and balsamic vinegar. That's all.

A Stew From A Few

What else is remarkable about this stew? Besides the fact that one of the three ingredients is leeks and my onion-hating husband wanted seconds? Or besides how it's terribly cheap to make and yet tastes rich and complex? Well, yeah, other than that, I guess it is pretty unremarkable (she said with tongue planted firmly in cheek). Truly, it's nothing less than kitchen-alchemy.

Pasta Bolognese At The Clean Plate Club

I was determined to try-try-again with the whole homemade pasta thing. This time using an actual recipe and my fantabulous new food processor (thanks Santa!). But what to put on top of it? Between you and me, butter and Parmesan cheese would be just fine. But homemade noodles deserve something less spartan than that. And they certainly deserve something more special than our regular old everyday spaghetti sauce. Kind of like when you get new furniture and suddenly the walls need to be painted, and then the carpeting looks so... boring, old, dated, shabby. It's a universal law that one new thing begets a need for another.

Well, we happened to have on hand most of what we needed to make a meat sauce, so that's what we did. Yes, we. Hubs and I tag-teamed this thing. I relayed the steps for the sauce to him while I rolled out the pasta dough, and he did all the rest. And a fantastic job he did of it too. We had a blast making up cooking terms a la the BBC Posh Nosh* series. Silly things like: "Irritate the carrots and celery...", or "Thoroughly confuse the tomato paste with the ground meat...". This was such an easygoing meal to prepare, from start to finish (it helped that we weren't in a hurry).

In order to balance all the awesomeness of the food, Hubs brought out our favorite Sangiovese from the cellar**. Whoa! Real wine... from a bottle? What's the occasion? Well, keeping in mind that universal law, he said, "homemade pasta with homemade sauce called for something a little more special than wine poured from a plastic spigot on the side of a cardboard container".***

We absolutely enjoyed every bit of this meal: the making of it, the eating of it, and the talking about how awesome it was afterward. Oh, and the wine was pretty great too. Salute!

Big Fat Bolognese from Joy The Baker

My Notes: I used half of a container of mirepoix that I had in the freezer (about two cups). Did not slice the garlic cloves, peeled them and tossed them in whole. Didn't measure the olive oil. Alas, we had no pancetta or even bacon. Used 1-lb ground beef and 1-lb JimmyDean ground pork sausage, 2 x 14.5 oz. cans of diced tomatoes, Vermouth, dried thyme + dried herb blend. All other ingredients as listed.  

Followed recipe instructions as written. After an hour of simmering, sauce had not reduced at all. Took off lid and simmered for another hour. I knew the extra cooking time wouldn't hurt it. After it reduced some, I skimmed a bit of the fat from the surface. Added salt, pepper and cream, then simmered some more. Was way worth the wait. Leftovers filled two big jars (froze one for later).

*Posh Nosh was a series of 10-minute shorts from BBC, that brilliantly lampooned television cooking shows. Watch episode #6 on youtube... then when you've stopped laughing, watch the rest (eight total).
**Coat closet.
***Yep, true confessions. Boxed wine. Don't judge us... we really do have good taste in wine, but times are tough all over. At least it was a mid-range box.

Meatballs/Meatloaf

A Meatball Time Line:

• Newly-married... spaghetti is a big part of our diet. Attempted the meatballs from Betty Crocker Good 'n Easy Cookbook. Unremarkable. I don't bother making them again.
• Trader Joe's opened nearby and we opted to buy their frozen turkey meatballs.
• My job got outsourced... shifted over to the fresh meatballs at CostCo. More meatballs for less money (and they were tasty too).
  
• CostCo stops carrying the tasty meatballs... we start buying the frozen CostCo meatballs.
• Had to tighten our belts even more*. We return to the arena of the homemade meatball and attempt to identify the secret ingredient in the CostCo meatballs that we loved**. We think caraway seed is it. Made a big batch of meatballs (>4 doz.) to freeze. We were wrong about the caraway seed. Meatballs were not horrible, but not great either.
  
• Research herbs, spices and meatballs online... now believe secret ingredient to be: fennel seed. Still had a couple dozen "meatblahs" to wade through before we could try it out.
  
• Time passes...
  

...And here we are today: We have bought the fennel seed, hit up CostCo for what seemed like a truckload of ground meats, and are ready for our next attempt. So, while my man is out front chopping wood, I am making thousands of meatballs. By evening we will be all set for the coming winter. My soundtrack? The smooth, cool, mellow and haunting double discs of Billie Holiday - Lady In Autumn: Best Of The Verve Years. I am in no hurry. I am a meatball making machine. I am in the zone.

The Meatballs:
Used these two recipes for inspiration/cook times/etc...
Totally Tender Meatballs in Tomato Sauce from TheKitchn
Caraway Pork Meatballs with Tzatziki at EatingOutLoud

3 lbs ground beef
3 lbs ground sausage (I used Jimmy Dean)
4 eggs
8 slices sandwich bread, torn into small pieces
1.5 yellow onions (CostCo sized), minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp dried Rosemary
1 Tbsp Fennel Seed
1 tsp Caraway Seed
1 Tbsp sea salt
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
1 Tbsp dried parsley
2 tsp ground black pepper

Mushed it all together with my hands. Used small cookie scoop to plop semi-uniform amounts of mixture onto foil lined baking sheets (24 per sheet). Rolled each mound into balls. Baked two sheets at a time for 20 minutes at 375°, swapping tray positions after 10 minutes. Let cool in pan. Roll meatballs off of their little fat puddles. Freeze on pan for 20 minutes, then drop into a large freezer bag and store in freezer. Made 4 pans of 24 meatballs (96 total), plus there was enough meat mixture left for....

The Meatloaf:
Referred to the following recipe for reassurance, time, and temp:
Basic Meatloaf, Page 495, How To Cook Everything, 1998

Added a can of corn (drained) to the excess meat and mixed it in. Formed two smallish meatloaves in loaf pans. Made a trough down the length of each and filled with ketchup, like Mom used to. Baked at 350° for 45 minutes (or to 160° on instant-read thermometer), rotating pans halfway through. They shrunk considerably. Poured off fat and juices from both, sliced and served one, froze the other.

Notes: A little too much onion; mince smaller and only use one CostCo-sized onion. Could stand more garlic, fennel, and pepper. Try fresh rosemary next time (hopefully I'll have some growing in the yard when the time comes to make more. [hint hint]). Surgical gloves would have made this go much easier. Not because of any squeamishness over touching raw meat either (I'm pretty much over that). But, once both hands are in it, you're kind of stuck if there's nobody around to help you answer the phone, turn on the tap, or touch... anything. In lieu of gloves, maybe I could put plastic baggies over the faucet handles. That would at least make it easier to wash my hands when I need to.

*This is only an expression having to do with watching our spending. We did not lose weight.
**The tasty meatballs came in a clear plastic two-bag pack surrounded by a cardboard sleeve. We separated the packs and stored them in the freezer, so the outer packaging was long since recycled. It probably just listed it as "Spices" anyway. That always bugs me. Which spices? Why don't they want you to know?