meatballs, salad

Meatballs and tomato sauce without pasta. 

Mint and basil mostly, with some sage and thyme and garlic tops recklessly topped from the Aerogarden without any concern for ratio. The lettuce greens are harvested from the other Aerogarden, likewise without any concern for lettuce type, whichever was growing, that is what was chopped off then mixed randomly with the herbs. This salad is .50% herbs and 50% salad greens. Olive oil, and the acid of tomato sauce substitutes for dressing.  The sauce was hot so the greens wilted that were underneath the meatballs and sauce. 

I used to have such a problem with meatballs. My idea at the time was the meatballs must be mostly beef and they must be browned all around before being added to sauce. This produced tight dense meatballs that were like overcooked hamburger balls. People gave me suggestions to smash the meat more than ordinary hamburger, but that did not help.  I kept trying to adjust the texture but never got it right. My family was biased against grain or breadcrumbs mixed with meat, both my parents derided it as filler. So I had to overcome that bias to achieve light soft-textured meatballs. I also gave up the idea of browning their exterior. There is no point in frying or baking a beef shell. Here is one example where the effect is improved by foregoing browning and the forfeiture of Maillard's reaction. 

These meatballs made from two mixed-meat patties formed earlier and frozen here. One small leek was finely diced and heated in an oversized pot with olive oil. Leek, because that is what I had on hand and it need to be used somehow before it turned.  A grated carrot was added, for no good reason at all, and then two crushed and diced garlic cloves. Off the heat, 3/4 cup rolled oats were processed briefly in a coffee grinder and added to the leeks and carrot mixture. This took the place of bread crumbs, and in my opinion something of an improvement. Salt & pepper, flaked chile de arbol flakes added to the mixture. Two jumbo eggs, and finally the two 1/3 LB mixed meat patties. The mixture was very loose and wet. 

The sauce is ordinary tinned Heinz tomato sauce that is dolled up with my favorite things: celery salt, worcestershire sauce, moderate nearly undetectable habanero flakes. The (very wet) meatballs were dropped into the boiling sauce. There was not enough sauce to cover the meatballs so they were turned when about halfway done, by then the egg within them had pretty much solidified and the meatballs were firm as they would get, although they could soak up more of the sauce. 

The red bell pepper is delicious just as it is. I have been enjoying them raw as snacks cut into strips.    

You will notice this plate contains three capsicum types in varying amounts. That will tell you something about a personal style that I seem to be developing naturally.