3.28.23
If you don’t love garlic, just keep on moving friend because this dish isn’t for you! Technically it’s Spring in the northern hemisphere, but Tahoe has yet to receive that memo and this week we had snow… and more snow… again. It’s not that I don’t love snow and winter, it’s just that I also love Spring and Summer and am ready for them to get their butts over here!
Anyway, back to garlic. I was feeling a little glum at yet another snow storm, albeit a mild one, and wanted to hide away in the kitchen with my head in a pot, enveloped by a small aromatic storm of garlic and potato, so I decided to make meatballs and mashed potatoes.
I always keep yukon golds in the house. If there are no potatoes around, then something has gone seriously wrong and it’s time to send help. I washed and cut up the potatoes into a large dice and then cooked them in a large amount of salted water until they were just about to fall apart. And, I had just been to the farmstand and had a gorgeous celery root bulb that I peeled and sliced super finely to cook with the potatoes. I nearly always add celery root and often parsnip to my mashed potatoes these days, it enhances them in such a harmonious way- you should try it!
Next, 1 pound of ground chicken and 1 pound of ground beef went into a large bowl (it’s what we had the in fridge, but you can use whatever meat you want. Just add a little olive or avocado oil if you’re using all white meat because they can dry out super quickly). To the meat, I added about a 1/2 cup of panko, a good handful of collectively chopped oregano, fennel fronds, mint, parsley, and rosemary (basically the herbs I have growing in my window, but you can use whatever you have on hand). Then, 1 egg and a good handful of crumbled feta. Plus a few generous pinches of salt and pepper. Also, a 1/2 yellow onion small diced, and 3 cloves of garlic grated on the microplane. These are a pretty basic meatball, you could had a couple pinches of chili as well.
Mix it all together with your hands, then use an ice cream scoop in the size you want them to be and scoop the meatballs out and place on an oiled sheet pan.
In the meantime, you should preheat your oven to 425 so it’s nice and hot to start browning your little cutie meatballs. Then turn the heat down to 375 after about 5 minutes and let them finish cooking until they tell you they’re done by making your kitchen smell like meatball heaven (total time is about 15-20 minutes).
While your meatballs are in the oven, you can make your mashed potatoes by straining them, putting them back into the same pot (I’m a fan of using the least amount of things as possible so that clean-up is easy) adding a few knobs of butter, some salt, and just enough cream to make the potatoes start to come together. Then mash it all together with a potato masher. My pro training taught me to always heat the cream and butter together with aromatics, then pour that into the potatoes that have already been pushed through a ricer or a food mill, but these are simpler times in my own home kitchen and I find that doing it this was is just as delicious, if only a little more textured. Next, I add about 2-3 sliced scallion and 2 cloves of garlic grated on the microplane. And lastly, I take a 1/2 bunch of lacinato kale that I also got at the farmstand, wash it, remove it from the stem, slice it thin, and then quickly sauté it until it’s wilted down a bit (to avoid making the potatoes too watery) and mix that in, like a colcannon.
And now I get to taste it and if I go back for a second spoonful, I know it’s right on the moolah! By this time, my meatballs were just about done and it was time for dinner. I had opened a bottle of Martha Stoumen 2021 Vermentino and it was stone fruity/ high acid/ round body gorgeousness and went really well with this dish.
I hope you make it and I hope that you are enjoying some spring blooms for those of us still buried beneath 10” of snow!
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