Cooking the Books: Dom's Mom's Meatballs

It's day two of a four day weekend for me, and I've a clean kitchen and a non-over-stuffed fridge. This means...

Time to cook.

I wanted to chop, and I wanted to mix, and I wanted an excuse to eat pasta. So, I hopped on over to the grocer's and bought all the fixings for Dom's Mom's Meatballs, the quintessential meatballs from Dom DeLuise (and his mother).

Of course, there are in-the-moment variations: I upped the amount of parsley, because I couldn't bear the thought of using just a bit of a bunch, knowing I'd not use the rest of it before it went bad. I bought pre-seasoned breadcrumbs, feeling in part like I was a poseur, but also admitting that, damn it, really good seasoned Italian breadcrumbs are, in fact, really good. I grated my cheese (parmesan -- Mr. DeLuise doesn't specify, but, c'mon, ya know his mom's using parmigiano) because the stuff in a shaker jar just isn't good enough for a loving batch of meatballs. I didn't measure the cheese -- it was closer to 4 oz by weight than by volume. I used 1.5 pounds of ground beef, and 1 pound ground pork, mostly because I couldn't buy a smaller portion of pork, and so I thought my option was "double the recipe" or "just switch proportions." There's only two of us -- well, three if you count Puck the Corgi -- and we've a small little freezer, so making 40 massive meatballs seemed foolish at best.

The meat mixture is resting right now. Didn't take any photos during the assembly & mixing process, because my hands were busy, and dirty. Perhaps I'll ask Nick the Chefly Husband to take some pictures as the shaping process happens. If so, I'll post 'em here. If not, well... They're meatballs. I assume they'll be brown and lovely, and eventually covered in red sauce and served with penne.

And a lovely glass of almost-undoubtably-red wine.