Sometimes when I make up new recipes, they work out great the first time out, but that isn't always the case. Occasionally they turn out so bad I give up on the recipe and move on to something else, but most of the time I think about what did and didn't work, rewrite the recipe and give the dish another try. This post is about one such recipe.
I wanted to make a recipe featuring meatballs flavored with Mediterranean spices and served up with cooked tomatoes and a bit of feta. Here's the recipe I started out with:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided, + 2 teaspoons
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons minced garlic, divided
3 slices stale white bread, torn into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons milk
1 1/4 pounds ground lamb
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, plus additional for garnish
1 teaspoon dried oregano + 1/2 teaspoon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 pints graped tomatoes, halved
2 tablespoons fresh mint leaves, chopped
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
warmed pita bread (for serving)
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook 1/2 cup of the onion until soft and lightly-browned, then add 1 teaspoon garlic and cook for about 30 seconds. Remove from heat and transfer onion and garlic to a large bowl to cool.
Place the pieces of stale bread in a bowl. Pour the milk atop the bread pieces, then use your hands to mash the bread and milk into a thick paste. Add the bread paste to the bowl with the cooked onions and garlic and add the ground lamb, parsley, 1 teaspoon oregano, pepper, salt and cinnamon. Wet hands and shape the lamb mixture into oblong, slightly flattened meatballs.
Heat another tablespoon of olive oil in the skillet. Cook the meatballs until they are well-browned (8-10 minutes). Transfer to a serving platter and cover with foil to keep warm.
Drain and wipe out the skillet and heat the final two teaspoons of olive oil. Add the remainder of the onion and cook until it starts to brown. Add the final teaspoon garlic and final 1/2 teaspoon oregano and cook 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes. Cook, stirring often, for 5-7 minutes or until the tomato mixture thickens. Transfer the tomatoes to the serving platter with the meatballs.
Add chopped mint to the skillet, cook 10 seconds, then remove from heat. Stir the yogurt into the skillet, then pour the contents of the skillet over the meatballs. Sprinkle with feta and parsley and serve with pita bread.
That sounded like a good starting place, but the results weren't everything I'd hoped. The lamb was quite fatty, the meatballs didn't hold together very well, and cooking the meatballs left me with a lot of blackened bits, much of it burnt onto the skillet. Just draining and wiping it out wasn't going to work, so I set that skillet aside and used a second one to cook the rest of the onions and garlic and the tomatoes. Pretty quickly, I found yet another problem. The amount of tomato was too much, and the halved tomatoes gave up so much juice that it would have taken a long time for enough liquid to cook off for the tomatoes to thicken significantly. I decided to transfer the tomato pieces to the serving dish with the meatballs, but I didn't want to lose all the tomato flavor still in the skillet, so I stirred the mint and yogurt into the juice still in the skillet. That was a mistake, as the sauce ended up being soupy and not very attractive.
The final result was pretty disappointing, especially given the cost of the ingredients (lamb isn't cheap, and good feta is also a bit pricey). Presentation-wise, it was a complete disaster, with the falling-apart meatballs rendered soggy by the mushy tomatoes and soupy sauce. It looked quite unappetizing.
First off, I needed to do something different about the meatballs. They hadn't held together very well. One possibility was to use some other ingredient to try to bind them together, but an obvious candidate - eggs - was out, because adding an egg would weaken the lamb flavor so much it would be lost beneath strong seasonings, juicy cooked tomatoes and tart feta. Considering the results of the trial run, I recognized one definite problem and another possibility. First off, the ground lamb was too fatty. I could offset that by mixing the lamb with some lean ground beef, though. Second, I wondered if perhaps three slices hadn't been too much bread. Next time I'd use less. Plus, Juli had noticed some bread lumps in the meatballs. I suspected these were pieces of the bread crust, so I decided to remove the crusts next time. With less bread, I could also reduce the amount of milk. Those two changes might result in sturdier meatballs without having to add an egg.
It also occurred to me that one way to keep the meatballs from falling apart might be to bake them, rather than frying them. Without the risk of fallen-off bits of meatball burning, I could get by with one skillet.
Next I considered the obvious problem of the tomatoes. I'd used way more tomato than I needed for this recipe, since I wanted the tomato to accent the dish, not drown it. Next time I'd use only 1 pint of the small tomatoes. The other problem was the sogginess. Cooking these juicy little tomatoes down would take a long time, and adding cornstarch or some other thickener would blunt the flavor of the tomatoes. Next time around, I decided, I'd cook the tomatoes whole, and only until some of them started to burst.
Without all the tomato juice in the skillet, I figured the yogurt-mint sauce would probably be okay as is. So, with the changes noted above, the beta version of my recipe ended up like this:
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil + 2 teaspoons
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons minced garlic, divided
2 slices stale white bread, crusts removed, torn into 1-inch pieces
5 teaspoons milk
3/4 pounds ground lamb
1/2 pound 90% lean ground beef
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, plus additional for garnish
1 teaspoon dried oregano + 1/2 teaspoon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 pint graped tomatoes
2 tablespoons fresh mint leaves, chopped
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
warmed pita bread (for serving)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place a wire rack on a foil-lined, rimmed baking sheet and spray the wire rack with nonstick cooking spray.
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook 1/2 cup of the onion until soft and lightly-browned, then add 1 teaspoon garlic and cook for about 30 seconds. Remove from heat and transfer onion and garlic to a large bowl to cool.
Place the pieces of stale bread in a bowl. Pour the milk atop the bread pieces, then use your hands to mash the bread and milk into a thick paste. Add the bread paste to the bowl with the cooked onions and garlic and add the ground lamb, parsley, 1 teaspoon oregano, pepper, salt and cinnamon. Wet hands and shape the lamb mixture into meatballs. Arrange the meatballs on the prepared wire rack and place in the oven. Bake until browned, then remove from the oven and transfer the meatballs to a serving platter.
Meanwhile, add the remaining two teaspoons of olive oil to skillet and heat over medium heat. Add the remainder of the onion and cook until it starts to brown. Add the final teaspoon garlic and final 1/2 teaspoon oregano and cook 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes. Cook, stirring occasionally, until a few of the tomatoes have started to burst. Transfer the tomatoes to the serving platter.
When the meatballs and tomatoes are both cooked, heat the skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped mint, cook 10 seconds, then remove from heat. Stir the yogurt into the skillet, then pour the contents of the skillet over the meatballs and cooked tomatoes. Sprinkle with feta and parsley and serve with pita bread.
So, that's the version I'll be working with next time I try out this recipe.
< to be continued >
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