Homemade Sweet and Sour Meatballs

I know that sweet and sour meatballs don't typically get the stamp of being homemade, because usually a person purchases packaged meatballs, chili sauce, and grape jelly all from the grocery store, but  my recipe for sweet and sour meatballs is literally made from scratch. This is because, last year, my sister and mom did some canning and the expiry dates on those jars were coming up fast so they needed to be used. My sister made delicious currant jelly with currants from the currant bushes in our yard, while my mother made an exceptional chili sauce.

Now, you don't have to use a homemade jelly or chili sauce for these, but it is highly recommended because it gives these meatballs a whole other dimension of flavour than the store-bought products. Suffice it to say that the flavour is even more sweet and sour. I do, however, want to turn people on to making their own meatballs at home though, because they aren't really that time-consuming to make and the searing of them in a pan prior to hitting the oven adds some flavourful char on them that will not be achieved with the store-bought variety. Here is my recipe for sweet and sour meatballs:

For the meatballs

2 Ibs ground beef
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
3 tbsp ketchup
4 slices of bread, toasted and crumbled
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
 2 tbsp vegetable oil

For the sauce

1 cup homemade chili sauce
1 cup homemade currant jelly

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a mixing bowl, add beef, milk, egg, ketchup, bread crumbs, salt and pepper, and mix until well combined.
3. To form meatballs, use a 1/4 cup to adequately measure the amount of meat you will use in one meatball. Then roll the meat into a ball with your hands. You should end up with twenty meatballs using this method.
4. Place a frying pan on the stove and heat the vegetable oil over medium heat until it is very hot.
5. In the frying pan, sear the meatballs in batches until they are brown and have a nice char on them.
6. Place meatballs in an oven dish.
7. In a separate bowl, combine the chili sauce and currant jelly.
8. Pour the sauce over top of the meatballs.
9. Place meatballs in the oven for approximately 1 hour until the meat is cooked and the sauce is thickened.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting

With the call of a snow storm here in southern Ontario the other day, I felt like having a treat. My initial attempt was to make a chocolate sponge cake roll with chocolate whipped cream, but after my sponge cake failed I was forced to try something different. The only problem was that I had already made my whipped cream. As such, I made chocolate cupcakes, because I figured the whipped cream would work well as an icing for them.

These cupcakes did not use the baking soda/vinegar trick that the red velvet one's did in a previous post, but somehow they were actually fluffier than the red velvet. I think this was due to the addition of one cup of boiling hot water to a 1/2 cup of cocoa powder that was added into the mixture at the end.

I decided that I like a whipped cream icing even better than a butter-based one or one with a lot of icing sugar, because it's not nearly as sweet and is easier to pipe.

Turkey Vegetable Soup

For Valentine's Day, my family had a turkey dinner since we had a leftover turkey from Christmas that went unused. Since I am an advocate of head-to-tail cooking, which is using all parts of an animal, I made a turkey vegetable soup for lunch today. Making flavourful soup stocks from a turkey carcass is very simple and you could easily substitute turkey with chicken in this soup as well. Here is my recipe for turkey vegetable soup:

Ingredients:

 2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 stalks celery, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 chicken or turkey carcass
water to cover
2 medium sized potatoes, cut into cubes
3 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 chicken or vegetable bouillon cube
1 tsp dried rosemary leaves
1 tsp dried thyme leaves
2 bay leaves
ground black pepper to taste


Directions:

1.  Heat olive oil in a large soup pot; then, add the onion and celery to cook until softened; add garlic and cook for approximately one minute until flavour comes out (you don't want to add the garlic any earlier or else it will burn).
2. Add the turkey carcass and cover with water. Allow to simmer for 1 hour approximately until you have a yellow turkey-flavoured broth.
3. Add potatoes and carrots, the bouillon cube, and seasonings. Let simmer until vegetables are tender.


 Note: If you have any turkey meat leftover or any still on the carcass, as I did, add that to the soup as well. I find that the meat should get added after the vegetables start cooking, or else it might get tough cooking in the broth. You basically only want to warm the meat through.

I ate my soup garnished with some freshly chopped parsley and a turkey sandwich on the side. For a delicious turkey sandwich, try adding some cranberry sauce in addition to your regular mustard.

Red Velvet Cupcakes With Cream Cheese Frosting

With Valentine's day so nearby, Red Velvet Cupcakes are a perfect treat to make! The red cake has a slight cocoa flavour that's delicious and it has a wonderful light texture. Additionally, it's topped with a tangy cream cheese frosting. I followed the recipe from the all-famous Joy of Baking website, which is an incredibly accurate recipe, because it makes 12 cupcakes as the recipe states, and because it makes enough frosting to generously top the cupcakes. I even had frosting leftover.



As I said, the cake was exceptionally light. This is because of a technique I have never heard of before, where once the batter is made, you add a 1/2 tsp of white vinegar to a 1/2 tsp of baking soda so that it foams, and then fold it into the mixture. I don't understand the science of this entirely, but I think that the chemical reaction makes the air bubbles in the cake larger, hence a fluffier cake.



I've had a challenging time often with getting an icing that pipes well, but the cream cheese frosting in this recipe was a cinch to make and pipe. I think the pipeability (not a word, but I like it) factor comes from the fact that a main component is whipping cream, which you whip with the softened cream cheese, vanilla extract, and confectioner's sugar. This is my favourite cream cheese icing that I've made and will use it with all things that require a frosting of that nature.



If you choose to make these, don't forget to add something festive to these luscious desserts! I added a nice cinnamon heart to the top of each cupcake for some festivity.

Balsamic Glazed Brussel Sprouts

Simplicity of food and using a few purposeful ingredients to create something delicious is very important to me. Additionally, I think that every part of one's meal should be enjoyable, and that vegetables or side dishes should not be an afterthought. This interpretation of Balsamic Glazed Brussel Sprouts, I feel, meets with these requirements for being a simple, well thought out dish, as well as a tasty side dish. Here's my recipe:

Ingredients

4 cups Brussels Sprouts, sliced in half
4 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
4 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Place Brussels Sprouts in oven dish, toss with Balsamic Vinegar, Olive Oil, and Salt and Pepper
3. Roast in oven for approximately 30-40 minutes, or until Brussels sprouts are tender

Julia Child's coq au vin

Tonight's dinner was Julia Child's coq au vin recipe. For those that don't know, coq au vin is simply French for 'chicken in wine'. This recipe uses very similar techniques to Julia Child's recipe for boeuf bourguingnon, which is a beef stew braised in red wine, except that you don't need as long a braising time for chicken as you would for beef. As such, coq au vin is a less time-consuming recipe to make, taking me 1 1/2 to 2 hours total.

You begin your recipe by browning some bacon lardons in butter and setting them aside. This leaves you with the rendered bacon fat to brown your chicken pieces in. Finally, you cover the meat with the bacon, red wine, and stock, and add your seasonings before letting it simmer until the meat is cooked through.

Some other crucial ingredients to a coq au vin

recipe are the sauteed mushrooms and braised pearl onions that you place over top of the stew when served. The onions and mushrooms each have to get prepared separately with very detailed instructions on just how to correctly brown your mushrooms or cook your onions. For the onions, you can braise them in water, red or white wine, or beef or chicken stock. I chose to use red wine since I had it and the onions came out beautiful with a brownish-purple colour.

I made some parsley potatoes (not Julia Child's recipe for them) as an accompaniment. They were simply boiled until tender and then tossed with salt, pepper, margarine/butter, and freshly
chopped parsley.

Despite the apparent simplicity of the coq au vin recipe, it tasted completely delicious. I haven't previously been a wine fan, but the beaujolais that we chose added such depth and richness to the sauce. One would not think that such complexity of flavour could come from a sauce with so few ingredients.

Fettuccine with Lemon, Red Pepper Flakes, Tomatoes, and Red Pepper

Last night for dinner, my sister and I made Chef Mario Batali's recipe called "Fettuccine With Lemon, Hot Peppers, and Pecorino Romano" from his book Molto Italiano. It is a recipe we have made numerous times, and the first time we made it, we followed the recipe exactly (with the exception of omitting the jalapeno pepper because we didn't have any). The recipe is basically fettuccine tossed in a sauce of lemon zest, lemon juice, and butter, but there are red pepper flakes for some heat, and red onions for some colour and texture.

We have found it to be an extremely versatile recipe, as one time when we made it, we added mushrooms and rosemary, and last night, we added tomatoes and red pepper. Hence, the reason I call this pasta post "Fettuccine with Lemon, Red Pepper Flakes, Tomatoes, and Red Pepper" as opposed to the correct title noted in Batali's book.

This is among my favourite pasta recipes right now, because it has shown me how simple ingredients and good technique can amount to something so amazingly flavourful. Lemon is not something that North Americans would under normal circumstances connect with pasta, so it has certainly been a kind of epiphany for me, in showing just how versatile lemons and pasta can be on their own or together in a single recipe.