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Best Meatballs

one and a half slices recipe italian spaghetti meatballs
OneandahalfSlices food blog recipes One and a half Slices Virginia eat local

Authentic Italian Meatballs

one and a half slices recipe italian spaghetti meatballs

Last weekend my world was changed forever when I was schooled by a friend very dear to me in the subtle art of the perfect Lady and the Tramp style meatball. That fine grained, tender, perfectly seasoned Italian delicacy resting lightly atop a bird’s nest of egg noodles dusted with Parmesano Reggiano. The ultimate comfort.

For a while now I have been faithfully married to my essential Bolognese sauce. Considering this sauce the pinnacle of comfort food, I had relegated meatballs to a facet of my childhood and did not intend to explore them much further. Until, that is, a friend of mine suggested we spend a chilly Sunday afternoon cooking meatballs in the style of this-is-how-my-grandma-made-it lore. Skeptical of such lore, but always willing to learn something new, we threw a cooler in the back of the car and drove out to visit Jesse Straight at Whiffletree Farm, purveyor of local chicken, pork, beef, lamb, turkey, and other pasture raised meats (see more about #eatlocal and Whiffletree Farm here). Upon our return, we set to work simmering a basic marinara. 

As it turns out, the secret to the very best authentic Italian meatballs is threefold: 1) cook them a long ass time, 2) use a combination of meats (beef, pork, and lamb), 3) the love of cooking. Slow cooking. With a loaf of fresh Italian bread by the stove for all day marinara sauce dipping and taste testing, a playlist, and plenty of good vibes, we cooked. We opened a bottle of red wine that was fantastic but I can’t quite identify beyond the bright red eyeglasses on the label. Free OneandahalfSlices swag for anyone who can tell me what this wine is. We talked and dabbed marinara sauce on the noses of my slightly grumpy kittens. And we connected.

So here we have it. The Whiffletree Farm three-meat authentic Italian meatball recipe, worth the lore, worth the investment, and worth every moment spent in friendship in the kitchen. Happy cooking.

🍅🍅🍅

Three-meat Blend
Meatballs
Marinara
Bird Nest 1
Unidentified Wine Pairing
Bird Nest 2

what you need

For the meatballs:

2 pounds Whiffletree Farm ground beef

1 pound Whiffletree Farm ground pork 

1 pound Whiffletree Farm ground lamb

4 eggs, or one egg per pound of meat

2 cups breadcrumbs, or 1/2 cup bread crumbs per pound of meat

5 garlic cloves, minced

one handful of parsley, finely chopped

1/8 cup dried oregano and basil

dash of cayenne pepper

salt and black pepper to taste

For the Marinara:

24 oz of canned, chopped Italian imported Roma tomatoes

three to four fresh Roma tomatoes, diced

one yellow onion or two shallots, finely minced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

dried oregano, basil, and parsley

salt and pepper to taste

(optional) parmesan cheese rinds

how to make it

First, get the sauce going.  Place a few tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom of a large pot stovetop. Add the minced onions and garlic, all the spices, and, if you are so inclined, a few pieces of ground pork. Sauté over medium heat for a minute or two and then add the canned and fresh tomatoes. Add salt, pepper, and spices, bring to a boil, then reduce to the gentlest possible simmer. Add the Parmesan cheese rinds and cover the pot.

Now, craft your meatballs. Set the oven to high broil and combine all three meats in a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs, breadcrumbs, garlic, spices, and fresh parsley. Stir with a wooden spoon until well combined. Try not to compress the meat down into the bowl too much in the process.

Gently roll meat into 1 1/2 inch balls, careful not to squeeze or compress the balls too much. Ideally, you want finely-ground meat and loosely-compressed meatballs. Arrange on a baking tray and broil for five minutes, remove from oven, turn each meat all over once, and broil five minutes more. 

Simmer. Carefully transfer all meatballs into the Marinara sauce. Ensure all the meatballs are covered by the sauce and, if they aren’t, add a bit of water so that this is the case. Simmer your meatballs in the sauce for two to three hours covered, then an additional hour uncovered until sauce reaches desired thickness. Serve over pasta of choice and sprinkle with finely-ground Parmesano Reggiano cheese. 

Don’t forget the red wine! 🍷

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Cheeseburger

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The Cheeseburger Post

one and a half slices cheeseburger grill grilling

Disclaimer: This post belongs in the Opinion section of the New York Times. It is pure opinion. Strong ones. Coming at ya fast. Are you ready for the OneandahalfSlices rules regarding Cheeseburgers?

  1. Fresh beef patty required. Not frozen. Hard stop.
  2. cheese: swiss or hard cheddar. no brie. 
  3. toppings: lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles.
  4. pickles: dill, crunchy, homemade. 
  5. fancy toppings: don’t.
  6. (unless): avocado, grilled portobello mushroom slice, or grilled peach slice. maybe. if it’s a leap year.
  7. sauce: none. no mayo. no ketchup. no aioli. 
  8. bun: brioche or fluffy sesame. must not disintegrate. 
  9. basically: don’t fuck with it too much. 
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Indispensable Chili

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OneandahalfSlices food blog recipes One and a half Slices Virginia eat local

Indispensable Chili

chili soup stew recipe oneandahalfslices

Chili is one of those things. There are chili cookoffs and chili arguments. There is chicken chili, vegan chili, white bean chili, and endless competition for the single spiciest chili ever to exist. While I appreciate a good office-party chili cookoff as much as the next, to me, chili is one of those sacred things that just should not be fucked with. Like cheeseburgers. Like cheesecake. Don’t try to make it fancy. Just make it good. So, here, basic, indispensable, chili.

what you need

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 pounds ground beef, bison, or pork sausage

2-3 cans beans of choice (chili, kidney, pinto… I like a mixture)

1 can diced tomatoes

1 large, sweet or yellow onion

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

1-3 green or red chili peppers

1 bottle beer (lager, ale, of witbier… the lighter the better for this recipe)

1 cup dark coffee

1/4 cup 100% cocoa powder

Cumin, chili powder, oregano, salt, black pepper

how to make it

Place meat, onions, and garlic in Dutch oven or soup pot on stove over medium heat. Chip up meat and brown thoroughly. Dice the chili peppers and place into pot along with bottle of beer, cup of coffee, cocoa powder, and spices, stirring thoroughly.

On spices, you want a little cumin, a lot of chili powder, and oregano, salt, and pepper to taste. Cumin is powerful and can turn a dish bitter if added in large quantity.

Simmer chili base on low heat for ~20 minutes to allow the base to cook into the meat. Add tomatoes and beans and cook for another ~30 minutes. Chili gets better the longer it sits on the stove, so feel free to turn off the burner, secure the lid, and let it rest for a while.

Serve topped with a dollop of 0% fat Greek Yogurt, a solid shred of good cheddar cheese (good cheddar cheese is always white, never yellow), a sprinkle of chives or parsley, and a side of corn chips.

"Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything's different." - Bill Watterson

A Note On Ingredients

Every year I make several New Years resolutions. One professional, one fitness-related, and one culinary resolution.

2017 was the year of the cacao nib.

In 2017, the culinary New Years resolution was to learn the culinary history of the cacao nib by way of cooking, of course, and in celebration of my favorite movie, Chocolat. After much reading and many a history lesson, a molé sauce cookoff with my mother, and the devising of the ultimate hot chocolate recipe, I arrived at a simple yet powerful rule of thumb:

Chili in chocolate and chocolate in chili.

These two ingredients are soul mates; chili is Calvin to the chocolate-y Hobbes. Good chocolate, hot or otherwise, always has a dash of chili pepper or straight up cayenne. And good chili should have 100% cocoa powder (among other things) to deepen its flavor and add to its base. This recipe uses cacao, coffee, and beer to create its rich flavor profile. Choosing a high-quality chocolate is key. I look to Guittard (American), Lindt (Swiss), Godiva (American/Turkish), Noi Sirius (Icelandic), or Girardelli (Swiss/American). Regardless of brand, the lower the cacao percentage in chocolate, the more milk/sugar/additives it has, so best to go with the darkest cocoa available (over 60% is desirable).      

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Essential Bolognese Sauce

spaghetti Bolognese recipe pasta oneandahalfslices
one and a half slices recipes local delicious food

The Essential Bolognese

spaghetti Bolognese recipe pasta oneandahalfslices

From Rome to Buenos Aires, pasta – specifically, spaghetti and meat sauce – hits different in other countries. This Bolognese sauce is as authentic as they come, with a counterintuitive yet elegantly simple sauce-making process that will ensure you never touch another jar of Classico. It is meaty, salty, and carries richness made possible only through the simplest yet most flavorful of vegetables – carrot and celery. 

For absolute best flavor possible, serve over fresh egg-based pasta (Virginia local shoutout to Dal Grano in Mclean, VA for the absolute best handmade pasta). It is better the next day and freezes incredibly well, so make a double batch and throw some in the freezer for later. Adapted from Marcella Hazan at NY Times.

what you need

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 onion, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

2 celery stalks, finely diced

2 medium carrots, finely diced

1 pound ground beef (or bison, or half beef half pork)

1 cup milk 

1 cup white wine

2 small cans diced Italian plum tomatoes

fresh egg noodle pasta

salt, black pepper, fennel, oregano, nutmeg

1 parmesan cheese rind

parmesan cheese, finely grated

how to make it

Place oil, butter, and diced onion in Dutch oven or large sauté pan and sauté until onions are translucent. Add carrots, celery, and garlic, and sauté another 2 minutes. 

Add meat, salt, pepper, and herbs. Chip up the meat and cook until brown. Add milk and a dash of nutmeg, cover, and simmer on lowest possible heat until the milk has disappeared (~30 minutes). After the milk has been absorbed, add the white wine and simmer until it disappears (another 30 minutes). 

Lastly, add the tomatoes and the cheese rind, and cook on lowest heat for at least an hour – long enough for the meat to break down thoroughly. Add splashes of water as required to keep the sauce from burning but at the end, all of the liquid should be gone. Taste and adjust for salt.

Spoon sauce over cooked and drained pasta, and top with finely grated parmesan cheese. Or use in my Authoritative Lasagna recipe!

Cooking Note: the method here may seem strange, but what you are going for is to cook flavor into the meat and completely break down the vegetables. First, you are asking the meat to absorb milk. Then, white wine. And then you make the sauce by adding the tomatoes. The sauce gets flavored with additional seasoning from this point and the cheese rind. 

While we’re on the subject of Italian food, let’s talk about olive oil. Last year, my mom and I went to Greece. That same year, a friend and I toured Rome and middle Italy (the inspiration, honestly, for finally getting this recipe right). In both places, I sampled olives in large quantity and came to the same conclusion: I do not like them (despite their prominence in the food of my inherited heritage: empanadas). Olive oil, on the other hand, is nectar of the Gods. Olive oil plus salt, pepper, oregano, red pepper flakes, fresh baguette, and a bottle of Brunello are makings for my favorite evening. 

Okay, but olive oil.

In Greece, we toured an olive farm and olive oil manufacturer and learned all the WRONG ways we had been purchasing and consuming olive oil. I think there is this general notion that we should all buy “extra virgin” olive oil for daily consumption but, beyond that, we don’t have any real knowledge of what makes one olive oil better than another. Turns out there is another phrase, in addition to “extra virgin” we should look for on our olive oil labels: “obtained exclusively from mechanical processes.” 

‘What an odd phrase,’ you might think. And you’d be right. But it turns out that 99% of the world’s olive oil is derived from primarily chemical processes (ick). If the olive oil is derived from nothing more than a mechanical press (which is what we would all think, right?), it will say so, explicitly, on the label. 

Finally, the last form of certification that your olive oil is legit is the International Olive Council’s (IOC) official seal (pictured below). Since most of the good olive oil in the US is imported (save perhaps in California), you can also look for the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO/DPO) seal for the country of origin, e.g. Spain, Italy, Greece. 

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