Avigayil Damm

After more than two weeks of chicken overdose, tonight’s menu is finally going to be beef. It’s still in the form of meatballs though, but my hubby didn’t seem to mind.

The usual stuff went into the meatballs: breadcrumbs, salt and pepper, and some Worcestershire sauce. After it’s fried, it’s set aside in an oven proof dish. The sauce is made of stir fried onion, cooked until tender with a quarter cup red wine vinegar, one and a half cup beef stock, one third cup of cranberries sauce (originally the recipe called for plum sauce/jam but during our shopping I forgot to look for it). Once the onion is soft, the sauce is poured over the meatballs. As for the parsley crust, it’s made of self-raising flour, butter, milk and, obviously, some parsley. It’s used to cover most of the dish to prevent the meatballs to get too dry and the sauce to evaporate and thicken too much.

It turns out that the onions absorbed most of the vinegar taste so it ended up being the most sour part of the dish. Mixed together it was quite ok but the taste of the sauce did not seep into the meat much. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to, I don’t know. But in general, I thought the taste of the three main ingredients of this dish had completely different taste. I guess they were supposed to compliment each other, which they did, although I would probably put less vinegar in it next time.

Today my hubby was struck by the ‘cooking’ lightning, and decided to bake bread. I, on the other hand, was due to cook chicken meatballs in tomato sauce, according to the one week menu.

First, the bread. My hubby found a basic white bread recipe which he followed. It’s the basic all purpose flour, yeast, milk and butter. This recipe also called for three teaspoons of honey. The dough is kneaded for a while, left to stand and raise for 45 minutes, kneaded again, divided into two baking forms, and left to raise again for another hour. My hubby read somewhere that instead of egg yolks, you can also use cold coffee (as in the drink, not the ground beans) to brush the surface of the bread to give it a nice colour. That’s exactly what he did, before he sprinkled some poppy seeds on the top. Right after it has cooled a bit, we dug right in, and were very happy with the result. Of course, nothing really beats the taste of freshly made bread.

As for me, I started my cooking process a few minutes after the bread was finished – or shall I say, after I have finished tasting a piece of the newly baked bread. The chicken meatballs (yes meatballs again, and yes I can see the ‘chicken’ tag grow bigger and bigger in the cloud) also contains fresh chopped thyme as well as breadcrumbs. The meatballs are fried first until golden brown, and then set aside. The sauce is made of chopped onions, stir fried in butter until soft, combined with crushed tomatoes, chicken stock, some balsamic vinegar and Italian seasoning mix. I added some tomato sauce which gives a little sweet taste to balance out the sour taste from the tomato and balsamic vinegar. After the sauce has thickened slightly, the meatballs are returned to the pot and left to simmer for some minutes. I served it with spaghetti (second favourite carbohydrate source) and sprinkles of parmesan cheese. The result left my sole customer happy – and customer satisfaction is the most important thing in my line of business!

I left for Medan earlier today, to attend a meeting which will take place tomorrow. For some reason, when I hopped into the taxi to go to the airport, my mind wandered off to a small stall at the airport’s food court which serves some traditional small meals such as meatball soup (bakso) and siomay (some balls made of fish and some vegetables served with peanut sauce – an Australian friend of mine calls it the ‘unidentifiable fishy object’). I had a sudden crave for bakso, and it didn’t really help that I left the house with an empty stomach.

When I checked in at the counter, I was informed that my flight was delayed for half an hour so I decided to go to the food court and order that meatball soup, since with the delay I had more time to spend. 

So after I got my boarding pass, I went straight to the stall in the food court – named ‘Bowl’ – and ordered a bowl of bakso. I was a little disappointed. Although the soup itself was good but unfortunately the meatballs did not taste much. It seems it has been overcooked so that the taste has left the meatballs and is now residing in the soup. Well the good news is that the meatballs were served in that soup so it was not too bad.

As one of my new year’s resolution is to drop cook proper food (as opposed to dining out or calling in), last Friday I went through my recipes collection again to put together a one week meal plan. I was reminded of this delicious meatball recipe and decided to cook it again since it was so successful last time.

We went for shopping (for a whole week food stock) at Hero in Kemang, which had almost everything I needed. I actually cooked this on Sunday, because then I had more leisure time on my hands. I divided them in two boxes and stored them in the freezer for consumption during this week.

Today we attacked this mouth-watering menu right after we arrived home from work. The meatballs are made of minced beef mixed with some bread crumbs, dried oregano, eggs, salt and pepper, whereas the sauce is made of beef stock, sliced onions and capsicum, paprika powder, caraway seeds, some all-purpose flour (to thicken the sauce), tomato puree and tomato paste. Just before serving, some sour cream is stirred in. I served it with spaghetti, although my hubby claims it would also be good with mashed potatoes. Maybe I will try that next time.

The end result taste actually reminds me of goulash soup, although it has a slightly more sour hint (because of the tomatoes and sour cream). But one thing’s for sure: it’s definitely a keeper.