It's Italian food week here in mandy-ville

I took a whole 3 to 5 lb package of ground beef and baked meat balls Tues nite. Yesterday I put the sauce together and added half the meatballs. We had spaghetti and meat balls last night, and my son today had for lunch.

Today is eggplant parmesan day. My first attempt. (I'll let ya all know) I had looked up recipes and they just said sauce. I put green peppers, onions and mushrooms in my sauce and the recipes didn't mention those. Also, due to the meatballs the sauce will have a meaty flavor.

Any other suggestions for sauce with meatballs? I wounder how it would go on rice? Sorta like spanish rice with meatballs, no?

Meatball sandwiches--On good crusty bread a little sauce and melted cheese---How can you go wrong?

You could use them on Pizza or in a Lasagna

The plain ones you can serve with a nice beef gravy with a little sour cream in it over egg noodles.

If you do them over Rice in the tomato sauce add some more green pepper and a little hot sauce for extra zing.

I like them cold-right out of the fridge for breakfast

you have meatballs left over? I'd be lucky to have enough for a meatball sandwich, but we eat like an army around here. We even have the night brigade who shows up by the fridge light at 2AM to scarf them down cold , along with the spaghetti and eggplant and.......whatever I haven't hidden well. Of course, when it's me, I know where all the goodies are hidden.

Next suggestion.....how about meatballs and sauce with cheese or spinach ravioli? Or, saute or kabob and grill some chunks of veggies (peppers, onions, zucchini, tomato wedges, mushrooms) toss the meatballs in long enough to heat through serve with a garlic/olive oil risotto.

Mary

All that was missing from the meal was lambrusco with it. I had always eaten it out at a restaurant and that's the wine we had.

This definitely goes on the monthly list of menus, for the day after spaghetti!!

I had found a recipe for a quick way to fix the eggplant. Can't imagine what a long drawn out way would be like. Just slicing and peeling the eggplants took me a half an hour. Then, I dipped them in egg and dredged them in a flour bread crumb mix. I browned them in the broiler, and then layered them somewhat similar to lasagna - parmesan, Mozzerella and sauce - and baked for about 40 minutes.

Served with spaghetti, and heated Italian bread with butter. Yumm! I am in seventh heaven!

Meatballs that aren't coooked (or at least finished) in tomato sauce have a different flavor from one's that do. Not better or worse, but different .... and made a nice change of pace. Finish (or reheat) your meatballs by frying them in a pan with just enough olive oil to stop them from sticking. You want the surfaces to sorta crust and brown, so they have a nice, ever so slight 'crunch' to them.

For an extraordinarily simply macaroni, try this:

Angel hair or spaghtettini or thin spaghetti
Cook as directed.

Olive oil
Garlic
Anchovies
Black pepper
Parmesan cheese

Mince the garlic very, very fine. If you have a garlic press or microplane, use that. You want the garlic to disappear as much as possible. Use an amount to suit your taste. I'd suggest two cloves, minimum, but we often use six or eight.

Saute the garlic in about 1/8 - 1/4 cup olive oil. In actuality, I don't measure. Use enough to cover well the bottom of a 10" frying pan. You'll need enough olive oil to generously coat all the pasta. The olive oil is 99% of the volume of the sauce.

Take the anchovies out of the can and pat off as much of the oil in which they're packed as you can. The more oil, the 'fishier' the sauce will taste. If you remove most of the oil, it won't taste at all fishy. You can add back whatever amount of this packing oil as you wish to make it more fishy, if you like that. Again, with the oil patted off, this dish won't taste fishy.

Mash up the anchovies. Use a fork, a knife, even a mortar and pestle. You want the anchovies reduced to a paste.

Add the anchovies to the olive oil and stir to dissolve the anchovies. The oil will turn slightly brown from the addition of the anchovies.

Add pepper to taste.

Drain the macaroni and **very quickly** add the olive oil sauce. Angel hair in particular has a propensity to lump up and stick very quickly. The olive oil sauce will instantly prevent this.

Now remember, you don't want the macaroni swimming in olive oil. You want just enough to coat it all and maybe see a small puddle of it in the very bottom of the bowl.

Shave or grate some parmesan over the pasta and serve.

Optionally, you could sprinkle this with some chopped herbs. Parlsey alone is fine, but you could add some oregano, or even both oregano and basil. Clasically, however, there are no herbs in it. We, however, like some herbs in it ....... at least some chopped flat leaf parsley.

Have the parmesan on the side for people to add it to taste. Between the parm and the 'chovies, you don't need to even go near a salt shaker .... 'cept to salt the macaroni water, of course. Don't omit that step.

The meatballs, with their nice delicate crunch and moist centers, along with some crusty beard to dip in the macaroni bowl, make this extremely simply meal much more than the sum of its humble parts.

Apart from making meat balls, this whole thing takes as long as it takes to boil the water and cook the macaroni. It really is that simple and quick.

Buono Apetito!

but as if anchovies weren't bad enough..........

there will be ABSOLUTELY NO dipping of anyone's crusty beard in my macaroni!!!

HAHAHAHAHA Great spot for a typo. It WAS a typo, right???

Mary

of the bowl. Yum!!!

Oh my gawd! One of the classic typos that spell check bounces right over! I read that damned post a couple of times and spell checked it, too.

You got sharp eyes!

But .... yanno ..... some folks might be better off doing that .... in their **own** bowl, of course!

My husband's mouth would be watering if he read the posts in this topic. :D

I'm googling it. :)

Result from google search -

Polenta is a close cousin of grits -

http://www.initaly.com/regions/friuli/sims.htm

A popular almost daily food in Friuli and neighboring Veneto, Italy.

You can eat it many ways



You can make it fresh


You can make it from a mix (but I can't imagine why you'd bother)

My version is a cleaning-out-the-refrigerator type of recipe. I've got some going in the crockpot right now with onions, celery, bell pepper, carrots, corn, cabbage, a can of diced tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, beef base - and the meatballs. I sometimes cook rice separately to add to it when I serve it.

You might have to crush the meatballs, though.

If you can bear the oven to be on, meatball calzones with part-skim mozz (store ok, homemade better) and fresh tomatoes that have been sauteed in olive oil with onions, garlic and mushrooms are close to heaven. Make a pizza dough, then roll out to about the size of salad plates (for a single person, 450 calorie version) or bigger if you please. I can't give an actual recipe, because this is a market vegetable mix dish for me.

Apparently - according to an off comment DH caught the other night on Iron Chef America - if you can't handle the oven, calzone can be deepfried to good result. (No, I have not let him try.)

Or subs as some folks call them. Put some mozzarella over the meatballs then slide them under the broiler just until the cheese melts...a minute or so.

You made me hungry for meatballs. :D