The single most important commandment for domestic harmony in my house is this: Thou shalt not mess with the meatball.
Polpette, and to a lesser degree polpettone, are as close as Mr. R&R gets to religion so it is a brave, some might say foolhardy, woman who disrupts the regular provision of these meatballs, traditionally flavoured with parsley and parmesan and cooked in a white wine and onion sauce.
But, dear reader, mess I did. It’s all Nigel Slater‘s fault – just reading his recipes gives me that irresistibly homey, content feeling of a steaming bowl of soup on a cold day, or a roast dinner, or a cake warm from the oven. (Plus you get the feeling he’s brilliantly bitchy in real life.) So his recipe for meatballs with horseradish was just too tempting to pass up yesterday. I’m so glad I risked life and limb and experimented. The earthy tones of dill and horseradish were surprisingly delicate and really set off by the sour cream – served with baked potatoes and sautéed leeks it made a perfect meal to ward off a chilly Miami. (No, really, it’s 9˚C outside and we don’t have heating…). So here’s my version which keeps some elements of the traditional Italian recipe as it’s made with veal, uses white bread soaked in milk rather than breadcrumbs, flour to thicken the sauce and isn’t as spicy as Nige suggests.
Miami meatballs with horseradish and dill
Adapted from Nigel Slater’s recipe in the Guardian
Serves 2 with accompaniments (double if you want pure meatball overload)
- 2 tbsps olive oil
- 1/2 large white onion
- 250ml whole milk
- 200g minced veal
- 200g minced beef or pork
- 1 egg yolk
- Small bunch dill, finely chopped
- 1 cubic inch horseradish grated (to give about 4 tsps
- 1 thick slice of proper crusty white bread
- 1 tsp mustard
- 1 cup beef stock (about 3/4 of a Knorr Beef Bouillon cube is fine)
- About 100g flour for dredging and thickening
- 150ml sour cream (fat free is fine)
Preheat the oven to 200˚C. Find a heavy based saucepan and an ovenproof dish or, even better, just one cast iron shallow casserole pan that can go on both the hob and in the oven.
Finely chop the onion and sauté slowly in the pan in 1 tbsp of the olive oil until soft and translucent, about 15 minutes. Don’t bother to clean the pan – use it to brown and oven cook the meatballs later. Place the onions in a large mixing bowl to cool.
Meanwhile remove the crust of the bread, tear into small pieces and in a small bowl cover it with the milk, leaving to soak while the onions cook.
Add the soaked bread to the onions, squeezing out the milk first so it’s not too wet. Mix in half the dill, a teaspoon of mustard, the minced meat and combine with hands so it’s all well distributed. Add half the egg yolk (you probably won’t need any more than that to make it all stick together) and combine again. It will be quite wet, but don’t worry, the flour helps it stick together and they come out lovely and moist.
Now prepare two plates – one with the flour for dredging and one to receive the meatballs. Roll walnut to golf-ball sized balls of the meat mixture between your palms and then roll each one in the flour and place on the clean plate. Continue until you have rows of meatballs ready for the pan.
Heat the other tablespoon of olive oil in that heavy pan and sauté the meatballs until colouring and catching. (If you need to do these in batches, remove to a plate in between.) Heat the stock in a saucepan. (If you’re using a stock cube and water, as I did, the stock will be of course be thin as water – thicken it up by making a paste with 1 tbsp of flour and 1 tbsp of the stock and gradually whisk the stock into this paste. Return to the saucepan and cook for a few minutes, then proceed.)
If you need to, transfer the meatballs to an ovenproof dish and pour over the hot stock. Put in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Meanwhile combine the sour cream with the rest of the dill and the horseradish. When the meatballs are ready, the stock will have thickened into a lip-smacking sauce. Serve with baked potatoes and the sour cream.
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