The Meatball Competition - 2013

My daughter Diane and I have been trying to settle a long standing dispute dealing with each other's meatball recipe. My claim is that my meatball recipe is the best in the whole wide world and I believe that her's is just a meatball recipe. In this blog entry I will describe the infamous meatball competition and I will introduce several new html9 version tags. The tags are identified by the < and > characters.

I believe that competing is partly psychological and for this reason I have established a strategy that is based on trash talking. I tried to intimidate her by saying the following:
<trashtalk>

• It will be like a walk in the park;
• It will be like taking candy from a baby;
• I will have one hand tied behind my back;
• It will be like shooting fish in a barrel;
• Like falling off a log;
• It will be easy as pie; 

</trashtalk>

She and I had been talking about it for several months and finally my wife and I visited Diane in Seattle. We set the date for the main event as well as the date to go food shopping for the ingredients. Needless to say, I was at a disadvantage because I didn't have my precision cooking tools and instruments and not to mention: 
<whine>

• the difference in climate; 
• the three hours differential between east and west coast;
• the increased humidity due to the proximity of the sea;
• the distracting siren sound from the nearby firehouse; 
• my daughter's vicious cat;
• and the fact that because we didn't rent a car we walked a lot and I was always tired.

</whine>

Clearly I was at a disadvantage BUT I had to go on with the competition.

Let me start by revealing the secrets behind my recipe that make it so yummy-yummy-down-my-tummy. The primary secrets are: 

• the way I incorporate the onions in the meatballs and the sauce;
• AND the fact that I use mint in the meatballs and the sauce.

The big secrets are finally revealed here! <secret>Typical recipes incorporate the onion in either diced or minced form but I find this distracting when eating the meatballs. I incorporate the onion by grating it. This way you have the onion in a form that it is equally incorporated into the meatballs and the sauce. As you grate the onion you get the meat of the onion AND the juice that is produced by it. I love using mint in the meatballs because mint has such a nice flavor and aroma. My mom always used fresh mint in the meatballs and she got it from our garden.</secret>



The day before the main event Eileen, Diane, Matt, a family friend, and I went food shopping. I was shocked to see that in Seattle or perhaps in the state of Washington they sell wine in supermarkets.

I bought a bottle of Riesling for the spaghetti sauce. I usually buy my favorite Brotherhood Winery Riesling but I had to settle for something less. As I was shopping I had a visitor:

I think that was good luck. Perhaps this little creature heard about the competition.

Evan's Recipe

I started the prep by quartering two average size sweet onions

Using the smallest side of the grater I begin to grate each quarter of the sweet onion.

Oops a small piece of onion fell in the bowl and I stopped to remove the offending piece. I don't want to have small chunks of onion in my meatballs and for that reason I remove them.

Five minutes later...poof! The onions have been converted to mush. <yum>As you can see from the grating you also get onion juice</yum>. I will use 1/2 of this for my meatballs and the rest for the sauce.

Then I worked on the mint. I used about one cup's worth of mint. Half will go in the meatballs and the rest in the sauce.

This is called a heap-o-mint.

Next I worked on the crimini mushrooms that will go into the sauce. Crimini mushrooms are much more flavorful than white mushrooms and they have a richer taste. I bought just a few mushrooms because I don't want them to be overwhelming changing the essence of the sauce. As you can see I wash them under running cold water. 

 Here are the crimini mushrooms washed and sliced.

In a medium pot I added about 1/3 cup of olive oil and got it hot. Then added 1/2 of the onion paste and juice and three garlic cloves using Diane's handy dandy garlic press. I cooked this mixture for about three minutes and then added the crimini mushrooms.

 Looking good so far.At this time I added 1/2 cup of the white wine. You could use any kind of wine that you may have.

While the mushrooms were cooking I started to work on the tomato sauce. I wasn't going to use canned sauce for the competition. I was going to use a food mill and fresh tomatoes. So, I washed four large, juicy tomatoes and cut them in small chunks. I did all that right over a pot that would hold the tomatoes. Here is an image of the tomatoes being cut and you can see in the background the food mill that I will use to crush the tomatoes.

I am beginning to fill the pot.

Here is the pot full of the tomatoes.

Here is the pot full of tomatoes cooking on the stove.

Then I cooked the pot full of tomatoes for about 6-7 minutes over medium heat just to get the tomatoes nice and hot without cooking them. I took the tomatoes off the heat element and I started to puree them using the mill. The mill works very well liquifying the tomatoes without getting the seeds and skin in the sauce.

Crank, crank, crank it baby.

Work, work, work, work...

Here is the sauce ready to be used.

I used 1/2 of the tomato sauce and add it into the onion/mushroom mixture.

The other half of the tomato sauce I added it into the bowl to make the meatballs. I also added one cup of two lightly scrambled eggs, one cup parmigiana cheese, the mint (1/2 a cup), one cup of plain breadcrumbs, and two tablespoons of tomato paste. NEXT TIME I WILL ADD THE WHOLE CONTENTS OF THE CAN. The can was either six or eight ounces.

Before starting to work on the meatball ingredients you need to get ready a cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil. This way when you hands are full of meatball shmutz you will not have to stop to wash your hands and get the cookie sheet ready.

You will need to drizzle some oil and spread it around the foif so the meatballs will not stick to it.

one pound 85% lean ground beef, one pound ground pork,

added a liberal amount of ground pepper and I started to mix. 

Arranging the meatballs. 
I must admit that in this area I failed to meet Diane's high standards. Further down will see how nicely Diane arranged her meatballs. My arrangement looks like an ill dispersed political gathering by police.

Here is a closeup. Perfection!

I placed both cookie sheets in a 375 °F oven for about 13 minutes.

After cooking them in the oven you fold the meatballs into the pot with the sauce. Leave them there for about 10 minutes and then serve over pasta.

This was called meatball competition and not pasta sauce competition but Diane and I decided to include the sauce in the competition because the sauce and the meatballs are so intertwined. My recipe is an authentic one. There are obvious parts that every meatball recipe has: ground beef and breadcrumbs for example.

Diane's Recipe

This was Diane's general work area. As you can see she worked off a printout itemizing her steps.

Here is Diane's list of ingredients for the meatballs:

• 1lb beef, 
• .5lb pork,
• .5lb veal,
• milk, 
• eggs, 
• breadcrumbs (panko!),
• Parsley,
• Parmesan,
• peccorino romano,
• salt, 
• pepper.

Diane washed and diced the parsley...

peeled the garlic...

and used her handy dandy garlic press to crush the garlic and added it to a bowl with about 1/4 cup olive oil.

added the parsley in a bowl...

Also added in the bowl two eggs, salt pepper, freshly grated cheese,

all in the bowl...

 1 1/2 cups of panco breadcrumbs and mixed it all nicely...

Diane formed the meatballs and here is a perfect arrangement of them:

Diane cooked the meatballs in a 370°F oven for 15 minutes.

At the same time she started the sauce. In a pan she warmed up some olive oil and then added a whole can of diced tomatoes in thick puree. Once she got this mixture to a boil she added one tablespoon of tomato paste.

Then she added one onion diced...

she cut and diced a red bell pepper and added that too into the sauce...

Here are the meatballs coming out of the oven...

Diane added the meatballs into the sauce too and cooked the whole thing for about ten minutes.

Matt worked on the pasta...

Judgement Time

Finally after both of us were all done cooking our sauces and meatballs we prepared the dishes for the judges. The judges were Eileen, Amanda and Matt. I also prepared a small salad for the meal but I will not go over the preparation steps because it is beyond the scope of the competition. Here are a few pictures of the dishes and table:

The following three images show a plate the two distinct piles of pasta topped with tomato sauce and meatballs. In all three images Diane's portion sits to the left of mine.

Here are a few shots of the table:

I should mention Amanda's wonderful recipe of vegan Turkish Köfte. Perhaps she will share the complete recipe with us. Here is an image of her contribution:

After taking a few bites from the meatballs here are my comments.

My meatballs were very fluffy and had a nice feel to them as you were taking each bite. The grated onion and mint worked their magic. The sauce was too thin but the incorporation of the the mushrooms was a perfect move. The next day we had the leftovers and my sauce was much better then. I voted for my meatballs. Diane's meatballs were dense but overall good. her sauce was much better than mine, though.

Diane and Matt voted for Diane's meatballs but Eileen and Amanda voted for mine. In all cases Diane's sauce was the winner.

<winning>So, after all the trash talk, preparations, hard work in the kitchen...I was the winner of the infamous meatball competition. Diane and I promised to make this into an annual event.</winning>Why bother having another competition next year? I will win then too.

Credits

I would like to thank Matt for being the official photographer, judge, and for cooking pasta to perfection. I also would like to thank Eileen for helping throughout the process and for being so supportive. I also have to thank Amanda for sharing her delicious vegan balls and for serving as a judge.