Sunday, September 9, 2012

Now That’s a Spicy Meatball!

Meatballs are one of those comfort foods that have lately resurfaced as a NYC foodie trend. But as with meatloaf, there is no earthly reason you should go to a restaurant and pay a 900% markup on something that is incredibly simple and quick to make with cheap ingredients at home.

I recently made a big batch of marinara sauce and a big batch of meatballs and froze both so as to have weeknight meals ready to go. The marinara, I decanted into plastic containers. And for the meatballs, I did this genius trick nicked from Everyday Food: Line a baking sheet with wax paper, form the balls and put them on the sheet like you were making cookies (pictured); freeze the cookie sheet; and once the balls are frozen, roll up the wax paper and stick it in a Ziploc bag. This way they retain their shape in the freezer—and they can be put directly into the oven without any prior thawing.

You can use ground beef, pork, or lamb for meatballs, but this time I had actually bought a pound of ground dark-meat turkey from the DiPaola farmstand at the Prospect Park greenmarket, where I usually just troll for free samples (the dark is actually cheaper than the ground white-meat turkey, which makes absolutely no sense to me because it’s more flavorful). Start by dumping this into a mixing bowl.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Ignorant American Fusion: Curry-Parmesan “Mexican Street Corn”

Welcome to a special Labor Day installment of Ignorant American Fusion: the school of cooking in which we ’Merickans attempt to emulate/reinvent/mash-up an “ethnic” dish with utter disregard for cultural authenticity.

Today’s recipe features one of the ultimate late-summer (and yes, it is still technically summer!) foods: corn on the cob. And it was not invented by me, gentle reader, but by The Rob’s brother. And it is as delicious as it is culturally inauthentic.