2: Meatball Fridays
We'll eat again, don't know where, don't know when...
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Having had a pretty horrible nervous breakdown in my second year of university, I was lucky enough to be able to run away and spend my third year in Konstanz, South Germany. In the heady days of open borders and Erasmus grants (this is what the German-Swiss border running alongside the city now looks like), I spent a year eating pretzels, learning to like beer, and cycling around, swimming in, and barbecuing next to the lake. Oh, and studying all sorts of things I wouldn’t be able to at my British uni - anthropology around death and dying, Romantic poetry, Victorian women’s literature, all sorts.
Having found myself alone in a new university, without the same sort of student societies and sports clubs we have in the UK (they exist, but not to the same extent), I knew I needed to make friends. It just so happened that I had read this post on Serious Eats about a month before I moved. Friday Night Meatballs: How To Change Your Life With Pasta… I was sold!
You can read more about the original idea on the Serious Eats site, but what it meant for me was this: every Friday I would make a big pot of pasta and two pans of tomato sauce: one containing meatballs, and one with red peppers and more tomatoes in, for the veggies. Guests (mainly other exchange students) just had to let me know they were coming, and bring wine, garlic bread, salad, or dessert. Bear in mind, this was a time and a place when you could buy a passably drinkable bottle of Hungarian Red for €1.89 at the Penny-Markt at the end of the road. What did I get out of the deal? An evening socialising without having to figure out how to get home (I’ve always been a home-bird). What did my friends get? A free-ish meal. I miss that ritual now more than ever - reaching into the pot with the garlic bread to sweep up the dregs of the sauce, topping up my friends’ glasses, even the shot of Jägermeister afterwards. One thing’s for sure: as soon as I’m allowed to, I’ll be reinstating it. If you’re in Edinburgh post-lockdown, shoot me an email and we’ll see if I can lay you a place at the table.
Recipes: The Best Tomato Sauce and Pesto Meatballs
The best tomato sauce:
This is my version of Livvy Potts’ version of Marcella Hazan’s classic tomato sauce. Simmer a 500g carton of passata with half an onion (red or white, whatever you have) and another handful of veg kicking around your fridge or freezer (half a pepper, some courgette chunks, whatever), a generous slug of olive oil, a couple of whole cloves of garlic, and salt and pepper, for 30-40 minutes or more. Using a stick/immersion blender, blitz until smooth (you may have to add some extra water to get it to blend - that’s fine). Taste and season. You can make double quantities of this - it freezes excellently. As you’re going to blend it anyway, if you have a surfeit of canned tomatoes (or fresh ones past their best), feel free to use those in place of/ as well as your passata.
Pesto Meatballs for 4-6 people:
Confession 1: The above photo doesn’t feature my Pesto Meatballs, because my new year’s resolution for 2020 was to be pescatarian. Instead it features the Co-Op own ‘Gro’ brand vegan soya meatballs, found in the freezer section at Margiotta’s (Edinburgh’s Italian grocery/convenience store chain) and my favourite veggie meatballs yet.
Confession 2: Like many of my staple recipes, my meatballs are based on a supermarket recipe that I’ve shamelessly used as a starting point for my own invention.
Using clean hands in a big mixing bowl, mix 500g high-welfare minced meat (ideally 50-50 pork/beef mix, if you can get it, otherwise all beef or turkey works well) with 2 heaped tablespoons pesto and generous amounts of salt and black pepper. Form into balls and place in a large, deep, frying pan over a medium-high heat to brown. After 5 minutes, turn all the meatballs to fry on the second side, and turn again after another 5 minutes. By now they should hold together pretty well as you move them around the pan.
Add your sauce and wait until it starts to bubble before covering and reducing the heat to a simmer for 20 or so minutes. You can use this time to cook the pasta. As long as the meatballs are covered by the sauce you can let it keep bubbling away gently for an extra 20-30 minutes without any issues.
Serve with scads of freshly grated cheese (grana panado is cheaper than parmigiano reggiano and just as good) and a glass of something nice - I love fizzy water if it’s a dry night.
Kitchen Tool: Sauté pan
If I could have only one pan in my arsenal, it would be this: a deep, preferably non-stick, frying pan with a lid. There are versions at IKEA, John Lewis
If you use the search term ‘shallow casserole’ you can find ones like this Le Creuset pan of dreams:
I have just retired my old IKEA one after five and a half years and three countries (I think it earned its keep) and replaced it with a Jamie Oliver brand one which, of course, isn’t anywhere online. I use my sauté pan for everything from dishes like this to risottos, curries, any sort of pasta sauce, stir-fries, pancakes, fried breakfasts, French toast… it’s a real workhorse.
Dreaming of eating at: Chez Jules
It can be hard to replicate in a restaurant the experience of having a bunch of friends round to dinner - free-flowing drink, nibbles on the table, and the feeling that you could chatter all night without being kicked out. One of my favourite Edinburgh restaurants, Chez Jules on Hanover Street meets that brief. Oh, and it’s incredibly reasonably priced, to boot. French bistro classics, carafes of house wine, with bread, salad, charcuterie, and cornichons on your table to start. And the dessert list is as well-done as you’d expect too: the chocolate mousse is just perfect.
The dining room is on the lower-ground level of a classic Edinburgh building, so you go down half a flight of steps from the pavement and duck your head to get into the dining room, which is packed full of groups laughing their way through their dinners. Conviviality at its finest - I can’t wait to be back.
Kaffeeklatsch: Belgravia
I had a great time last weekend binge-watching Julian Fellowes’ newest historical TV show, Belgravia. It’s on ITV Player (STV in Scotland) and is a ridiculously soapy show following 1830s high-society - and slightly less high-society - families, with all the shenanigans you’d expect and some you wouldn’t. Edinburgh lovers will get a kick from spotting Edinburgh being used as 1830s London, with Moray Place serving as Belgravia and both City Chambers and Parliament Square playing as Bishopsgate and the City. One character appears to live in City Chambers, and there are two families living on opposite sides of the Moray Place/ Doune Terrace junction, but who we are supposed to pretend live a carriage-ride away from each other in different parts of Belgravia. That used to be my route home from work, so I love seeing it on TV, and especially pretending to be a different time and place altogether.
Loved seeing Edinburgh pretending to be somewhere and somewhen else? In the BBC’s 2004 adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South (now on Netflix, praise be!), Edinburgh pretends to be 1850s ‘Milton’/Manchester.
Thank you for reading!
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