I been cookin' again

I 'jacked this recipe straight from First Nations blog which has a link on Gales' blog. The yield, as you can see, was TWO large casseroles of meatballs. Recipe is below with a few modifications and explanation.



I decided to make home made noodles. I dragged out my gigantic bread board dumped a cup or so of flour on the board, made a little well in the flour, cracked in two eggs and mixed it up and used my favorite wooden rolling pin to roll it out thin enough to roll into slices. I popped the noodles into a large pot of boiling salted water and cooked them for about five minutes.




After letting the meatballs cook for 20 minutes I stirred in the drained cooked noodles. The flavor was tasty, I'm thinking I could have added a pinch more dill as all the flavors melded together well. One casserole went in the freezer for later.

MEATBALL RECIPE (I don't know why they were called Masonic Meatballs but no fuzzy hats were involved).

1/2 cup cornstarch mixed with 1/2 cup plain white flour for dusting meatballs. Save left over for gravy.

2 lbs ground pork (or 2 pkg Italian Sausage)
2 lbs ground beef.
1/2 cup dry white bread crumbs (I used the packaged Italian mix bread crumbs).
1 egg
1/3 to 1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp Allspice
3 tablespoons minced shallot
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
Mix this together very very well and let chill covered overnight in the fridge (Jeez a Two day recipe!?)

Next day form into ping pong sized balls. (I used a small ice cream scoop)
Dust meatballs with flour/cornstarch mixture,roll between hands while shaking off excess and then bake on a lightly oiled sheet pan for 20 minutes at 400 degrees F.
Once they come out of the oven, let sit for 20 minutes then dump into a baking dish large enough to hold them one layer deep.

Gravy recipes:

4 cups beef stock
1/2 cup of lager beer (jeez, take one sip of beer, dump ENTIRE beer into mixture!)
1 cup milk into the left over cornstarch/flour mixture to make a slurry with the milk.
1/3 cup plain yogurt (ahem 1/3 cup is about half of the small yogurt cups, dump the whole thing in!)
1/2 cup white bread crumbs, toasted brown VERY IMPORTANT. (Um not so important use some more of those Italian seasoned breadcrumbs, works just fine)
1/4 cup minced shallot or what every was left over from chopping the first batch of shallot.
1/2 cup fresh minced parsley (Optional as I used it ALL in the meatballs)
(optional a few shakes of ranch dressing sprinkles) ( didn't use this)
(optional salt up using powdered chicken bouillon instead of plain salt) I used Kosher salt about 1 tsp.
1//3 tsp white pepper (Don't be silly I used black pepper)
1/3 tsp nutmeg (gah very short sprinkle because nutmeg always tastes like soap)

Dump gravy ingredients all in a pot on cold stove, bring it up to "high" while you stir. If you taste the gravy at this point it will have a really strange sour backbite, during cooking this all goes away and mellows out very nicely. Dump gravy over meatballs coating each one.

DO NOT COVER

Place the meatballs and gravy in the oven at 275 Degrees F for THREE HOURS.

This gives you plenty of time to wash up all pots and pans you have just used.

If you pooh pooh this and try 375 oven for 30 minutes it will not taste the same. Do not even think about trying it in a crock pot. Check occasionally to turn meatballs in gravy to keep them from drying out.