Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

Just went on a road trip with a friend whom I haven't seen in 15 years, and she hasn't been to Washington in 30 years. We spent a couple of days in Seattle (We photographed the biplane on Lake Union from the Space Needle; furthest zoon on my Kodak EasyShare Z712 IS), a day in Leavenworth, and a day in Spokane (she went to school at Whitworth.) I discovered that she is into cooking and entertaining, so I made Greek Meatballs for her. Here is the recipe.

Greek Meatballs:

1 pound ground beef (I used 94% lean, so I could add olive oil; most packages at the store seem to be 1.4 pounds anymore)
1/2 to 1 onion, chopped small
At least 4 cloves of garlic, minced
10 saltine crackers, ground (Or breadcrumbs and salt)
olive oil
oregano
parsley
mint
1 egg
pepper and salt to taste.

you can let it stand and absorb flavors or form into balls and cook in olive oil right away.

sauce: puree in a blender:
1 can minced tomatoes (I use del Monte Italian recipe because it is at Costco)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup red wine

When meatballs are brown, add sauce and simmer 25 minutes to all day; it is like spaghetti sauce in this way. You may have to ladle extra oil out before serving.

Serve over rice.

Notice the almost complete lack of amounts? Means that quality varies. Last time there was about 1/4 cup of parsley and mint, which were fresh, for a doubled the recipe. The book I got it from calls for "1 breakfast cup of bread crumbs" and never defines breakfast cup. This feeds about 5-6, depending on the number of teenagers.

This is adapted from keftethes me domata saltsa, page 87 in "The Home Book of Greek Cookery" by Joyce M. Stubbs. It calls for adding red wine vinegar to the meatballs, and onions and sugar to the sauce. When I do this by memory, which is all the time anymore, details like that get forgotten!