The first real blast of winter arrived this week. Temperatures dove into the teens and the cold sank right into the bones. My first response to this assault is to move to the stove. It is natural to shift into a different gear in the kitchen when the elements get brutal. 14°F outside is pretty brutal. The perception that heartier foods warm not just the soul but the body as well, may not be founded on any scientific evidence, but it is a welcome illusion nonetheless. With the rush of holiday business in the store behind me, I find time to batch cook large quantities of foods I can freeze and draw upon throughout the winter. Soups, gravies, casseroles, and stocks are stored away for convenience, providing quick solutions when time is limited. Being the primary cook in the household, I get requests from my wife for her favorites. Last weekend it was spaghetti and meatballs. I decided to make enough meatballs to get several meals out of it so I started with 5lbs of ground beef.
My recipe is fairly simple:
-Ground Beef (I roll them big so 1# = 4 meatballs)
-2 cloves of garlic peeled and minced per lb. (of meat)
-1 cup of fresh breadcrumbs per lb.
-1 egg per lb.
-2 Tbsp of Worcestershire sauce per lb.
-2 tsp of salt per lb.
-½ tsp of black pepper per lb.
-¼ cup fresh flat leaf parsley leaves chopped per lb.
-2 tsp dried oregano + 2 tsp dried basil per lb.
-2 ounces EVOO per lb.
I mix this well and fry the meatballs in olive oil.
I keep a marinara base sauce in the freezer in quart size containers to pull out as needed. I finished cooking the meatballs in the sauce which gave it a great meaty taste and I tossed the spaghetti in that. I actually yielded close to thirty meatballs so I put some in the deep freeze for a snowy day. We got a new Dolcetto in the store last week from Renatto Ratti. A very rustic style with bright acidity and tobacco notes, it worked well with the sauce.
My Mom's side of the family comes various place in Eastern Europe and the Polish influence was felt in the things my Great Grandmother used to cook for the kids. I was inspired to make egg noodles and cabbage with Kielbasa a few weeks ago. I sauteed cabbage in olive oil and butter.
I boiled my egg noodles and added them to the cabbage in the pot and let everything get lightly browned and crispy. Served up alongside the kielbasa it was the epitome of comfort food.
This is the kind of meal I typically think of drinking Alsatian whites wines with. A Gewurztraminer or Riesling from Zind-Humbrecht or Albert Mann would be awesome with this meal. These wines offer clean bright fruit and complex spiciness that works as a perfect foil for the rich and earthy flavors of the sausage and cabbage.
Pasta of any type is comfort food to me. I recently made something I'd seen on countless restaurant menus, but never tried in my own kitchen... Puttanesca. If you're the kind of person who hears anchovies and thinks “Yuck”, then this is a must try for you. It is the wonderful harmony of garlic, anchovies, tomatoes, olives, capers, crushed pepper, and olive oil and when executed properly with quality ingredients, it is divine.
The name, literally “whore sauce”, is thought to be derived from the meal an unfaithful woman would throw together quickly for dinner since her afternoon might be spent in other pursuits. Oh, those urban legends, so colorful! Anyway, bad behavior aside, this is a quick but very satisfying sauce whose chunky texture works well with a short tube type pasta such as penne.
The bright and briny flavors here are a good match for my new favorite Montepulciano D'Abruzzo Poggio Anima Samael. The label is a grabber but the wine is right up there.
Bright red fruits and subtle tannins make this medium body wine marry well with the Puttanesca.
Whores... comfort food... Really now people?!!
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