Nothing says comfort food like Spaghetti & Meatballs. In this recipe, you’ll prepare Classic Marinara Sauce as well as scrumptious, tender meatballs that will stick to your ribs, and possibly put you into a food coma on a cold winter’s night.
Time: 60 minutes Level: Easy Cost: About $4-6 per plate Serves: 4-6
Ingredients:
For the Meatballs:
3/4 lb ground beef (either 80/20 or 70/30, but too lean and your meatballs will dry out and fall apart)
1 lb ground pork
4oz bacon, finely diced
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs
1 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (fresh is best!)
1-2 TBSP freshly chopped Italian parsley
2 cups classic bread crumbs (or 1 cup Panko, if you prefer)
salt and pepper
1 TBSP powdered oregano (I like a lot of oregano, adjust accordingly)
Add ingredients 11-13 in a medium bowl and allow to soak for 10 minutes.
While soaking, combine first 10 ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Remove bread from milk/water and add to meat mixture.
Mix together well using your hands. Add water or milk, a few splashes at a time, until the mixture becomes sticky but not overly wet. You want it just moist enough that it sticks together and that’s it. Remember, once you add the water, you can’t take it out! Don’t overwork the meat.
Once the mixture is the desired consistency, begin making your meatballs by rolling a portion of the mixture into balls between the palms of your hands. I prefer my meatballs to be about 2.5″ in diameter, but form them to whatever size you like.
Pat them dry-ish, and transfer them to a wire rack set on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Transfer them to 450°F oven and bake until brown, 10 – 15 minutes. If they don’t brown enough, you can turn the broiler on for a couple minutes. Once browned, turn the oven off and allow meatballs to finish in residual heat.
Once the marinara sauce has reduced to desired consistency, remove the meatballs from the oven and place them in the sauté pan with the marinara sauce. Using tongs, gently rotate them in the sauce to coat and simmer on low for 5-10 minutes, or until meatballs are cooked through (internal temp should be 165°F). Serve over spaghetti.
A one-pot wonder ready in less than an hour, this dish is a riff on the classic French dish Coq Au Vin. It is also a somewhat lighter dish, with a slightly tangy but still rich flavor profile, due in part to the use of Riesling, a white wine, rather than a French red. Classic Coq Au Vin takes several hours to prepare (or if you follow Julia Child’s Recipe it will take you all day… still worth trying though!), but this dish should take you considerably less time.
Time: Around 60 minutes Level: Advanced Cost: About $8 per plate Serves: 4- 6
4 chicken breasts, halved crosswise (or 8 chicken thighs, or 2 halved breasts and 4 thighs)
2 TBSP olive oil, divided
1-2 TBSP butter (or clarified butter, also known as ghee)
6 TBSP flour
Salt and Pepper
2 TSP paprika
3 shallots, diced (see how to chop an onion, this trick works for shallots too!)
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
8oz Cremini or Bella brown mushrooms, halved or quartered, depending on their size
Optional: 1/4 cup brandy, for flambé
2 cups dry or off-dry Riesling white wine (in a pinch, any dry white will do, and cheap is fine as long as you’d drink it).
1 cup decent, low sodium chicken broth
1 cup heavy cream
1 bunch chopped parsley
Instructions
Mix flour, salt and pepper, and paprika in a medium bowl and whisk together. You’ll be using this to dredge the chicken in a minute.
In a large, heavy bottomed skillet, heat 1 TBSP olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the bacon lardons and sauté until lightly browned but not crispy, and some of the fat has rendered.
Add shallots and sauté until mostly translucent. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, 1-2 more minutes.
Don’t burn the shallots and the garlic! If you’re not sure if the pan is too hot, before dumping all the shallots into the pan you can test for temperature by tossing in one little piece of shallot. If it doesn’t react much, it’s probably a good temperature. However, if it crackles loudly, or if hot fat spatters everywhere, or if it jumps out of the pan, it’s too hot. Reduce the temperature before adding in the rest of the shallots and garlic.
Sauté shallots, garlic and lardons until shallots are somewhat translucent and garlic is very fragrant, about 3-5 minutes.
Remove lardons, shallots and garlic with a slotted spoon and reserve in a medium bowl, leaving the fat behind in the pan.
Dredge chicken pieces in flour mixture. Shake off the excess and place each piece into the hot pan with the bacon fat. Brown chicken on all sides, remove and reserve.
You may need to work in batches; that’s okay – overcrowding the pan will reduce the overall temperature of the pan and make it harder to brown the chicken. You may need to add about 1 TBSP of fat – either butter or olive oil – between batches; that’s okay too. Also, note that the chicken doesn’t need to be cooked through at this point – it will finish cooking in the sauce at the end.
Once the chicken has been browned, removed from the pan and reserved, you should still have at least 1 TBSP of fat in the pan. If you don’t, add 1 TBSP of butter and melt over medium heat.
Add mushrooms and continue to sauté over medium-high heat until they have absorbed most of the fat and begin to caramelize just a bit.
You can use a match or grill lighter to do this. Simply add the liquor and then ignite your flame and hold it OVER the pan. The vapors will ignite generating an impressive flame. Don’t freak out! Simply remove the pan from the heat and shake vigorously back and forth until the flames subside. For safety reasons, I’d recommend keeping a lid nearby to extinguish any flames, should they become out of control, although this is unlikely to happen. If this step causes you any trouble and you don’t get flames, don’t worry… just cook everything down for a minute or two until the raw alcohol has evaporated.
Add the Riesling wine and chicken stock to deglaze the pan. Continue to stir with a wooden spoon and scrape up any brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan (this stuff is called fond and it’s delicious). Bring to a boil and return chicken and any drippings to the pan.
Add reserved shallots, bacon and garlic back to the pan.
Partially cover, lower heat to a simmer, and allow to cook for about 45 minutes, keeping an eye on the liquid level of the pan – you don’t want it to reduce too much.
After about 45 minutes, the chicken will be cooked through and very tender, and the liquid will have reduced somewhat. Remove chicken (again) from the pan and stir in the heavy cream. Reduce by 25-30%, stirring often, until sauce is desired level of thickness. Return chicken to pan (again) and cook for 2 minutes more. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Serve over mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or with a loaf rustic french bread. Anything to soak up that sauce!
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*My original post omitted this step. It still will work great without it. However, this step adds a depth of flavor that is quite enjoyable. In either case, don’t worry about it too much!
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, chunked into roughly 1 – 1.5 inch cubes
12 oz – 1 lb smoked sausage (try Cajun Andouille for a little kick), sliced into 1/4 inch thick ‘coins’
1lb Brussels sprouts, lose leaves removed, and halved.
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese (plus more for serving, if desired… who am I kidding, it’s desired).
6 cloves garlic, minced, divided (i.e., two piles of minced garlic of roughly 3 cloves each)
1 small shallot, minced
2 TBSP powdered, dried oregano
1 TBSP sweet paprika
Salt and Pepper
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup chicken broth
Olive Oil
Prep
Bring 4-5 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot, for pasta. Leave it simmering with a lid on so it’s ready to go when you are.
Preheat oven to 400F
Dice chicken into cubes. In a large bowl, using your hands, mix cubed chicken well with drizzle of olive oil, oregano, paprika and salt and pepper. Set aside.
Slice sausage and set aside in a separate bowl.
Toss sprouts in dash of olive oil, 1/2 of minced garlic and Parmesan cheese. Arrange in a single layer on a lined baking sheet.
Combine white wine and chicken broth in a convenient container, set aside.
Cook
On a lined baking sheet, roast sprouts in a single layer in 400F oven for 20 minutes total, stirring them around at the half-way point to ensure even cooking and browning.
Meanwhile, in a large skillet or dutch oven, brown sausage over medium-high heat in 1 TBSP olive oil. Once most of the (delicious) fat is rendered, remove sausage with a slotted spoon and reserve.
Brown the chicken on all sides in the same pan.
Add sausage back into the pan, along with white wine, chicken broth, minced shallot and remaining garlic. Bring to a boil, and then simmer, allowing the liquid to reduce by about half.
While mixture is reducing, cook penne pasta according to package directions, about 12 minutes.
In the last two minutes, add sprouts to the chicken-sausage mixture and stir well.
Lamb tends to be one of those things that people either love or hate. For a long time, I hated it because the only way I’d ever had it prepared was slow braised in a crockpot, stew-style, and served with mint jelly. While that may be some people’s cup of tea, it wasn’t mine. Then I figured out that lamb could be prepared much like steak – served medium rare. When served like this, it has a rich,complex flavor that makes an excellent alternative to beef.
This particular recipe uses lamb loins although lamb chops would work just as well. Lamb loins look like tiny T-bone steaks – which is essentially what they are, just from a lamb instead of a cow (i.e., tenderloin on one side and strip steak on the other). As such, they are totally delicious. Because they’re small, they don’t have a lot of meat on them. My boys and I can easily polish off about four; my wife will eat two. Even still, if you can find them on special it makes for a pretty economical meal. Also, this recipe is SUPER easy.
Ingredients
12 – 16 Lamb Loins (serves 3-4 hungry folks)
3 TBSP Olive Oil
6-8 garlic cloves (finely minced or pressed)
juice of one lemon
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste.
Method
Consider trimming a bit of fat off the outside of the lamb loins if they’re particularly fatty. 1/4 to 1/8 inch or so is probably good. I probably should have done that for this recipe; I will next time. In either case, no biggy – they came out great.
Place lamb loins in large tossing bowl and add olive oil. Toss to coat. Add garlic, lemon, salt and pepper. (Note: Normally I don’t like garlic presses, but in this case I’ll usually opt to press my garlic because it’s easier than mincing them into a paste, which is really what needs to happen). Cover and refrigerate for as little as 20 minutes or as long as 12 hours.
If preparing in the kitchen, preheat the oven to 300F. Line a baking sheet with oven-safe parchment paper for easier clean up. Add 1 TBSP olive oil to a cast iron or copper skillet, and heat to very hot until oil is shimmering and smoking slightly. Sear lamb loins in batches, 2-3 minutes per side or until nicely browned. Don’t overcrowd the pan. Transfer lamb loins to baking sheet and bake 15-20 minutes or until an instant read thermometer reads 130F for medium-rare. Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.
If preparing on the grill, build a 2-zone charcoal fire or alternatively, on a gas grill, light one or two burners only. Shoot for 300F at grate level on the cool side (don’t rely on your grill’s thermometer, spend $5 on an oven thermometer at Home Depot and place it on your grill grate to ensure an accurate reading). Add a couple of mesquite wood chunks, if you like (mesquite is perfect for this meal because of it’s strong flavor and the short smoking time involved).
Sear lamb loins on hot side of grill with the lid open for 3-5 minutes per side or until nicely browned. Transfer to cool side and close the lid. Grill for 15-20 minutes or until an instant read thermometer reads 130F for medium-rare. Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Remember: In order to achieve a piece of meat that is perfect medium-rare end to end and seared on the outside (see picture) the meat needs to be the same temperature throughout when the cooking process begins. I recommend going straight from the fridge to the grill/pan without letting it come up to temp on the countertop. For more information see The Secret to Perfect Beef Roasts and Steaks.
Serve with steamed asparagus or green beans and rice pilaf.
Pairs well with Malbec (Argentina), Shiraz (Australia) or Red Zinfandel (California)
The Intrepid Gourmet 