Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Maybe it wasn't cloudy today, but there was a 100% chance of meatballs!  Beef and turkey meatballs to be exact.  We needed something to go with our spaghetti squash.  The ground beef came from the CSA a few shares ago, and I had the turkey from a past Costco run.  To top it off, we used some left over pepperoni sauce, but I'll get into that shortly.

First, the balls of meat!  We had about a 1:1 ratio of beef:turkey.  To that, we threw in 2 eggs, some garlic, some panko, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and fresh parsley.

Now's the fun party where you get all messy and mix it up by hand.  We formed them into balls and put them on the baking sheet, ready for the oven.

At the same time, we cut the squash in half and scooped out the guts.  Each half was rubbed with a little olive  oil, and sprinkled with some salt and pepper.  Then, everyone went into the sauna, aka the oven, to cook.  We also threw n some garlic for the garlic bread (that's what the little foil ball is).

 

Once the squash is soft, you just use 2 forks to pull the meat from the sides, and it just shreds into strands, like spaghetti.  Super simple.  And since we have bottomless stomachs, we each ate a half.

Now for the sauce...glorious, glorious pepperoni sauce.  Did you watch Top Chef All-Stars, when they were at Ellis Island and had to cook food inspired by their heritage?  I'll give you a brief recap of the highlights.  Mike Isabella came up with pepperoni sauce...basically a puree of pepperoni and tomato sauce...put it over chicken thighs, and Gail Simmons claimed it was the best thing she'd ever eaten.  How had no one thought of this sooner?!?!?  Once Graffiato opened, and chicken thighs with pepperoni sauce was on the menu, I had no choice but to order it.  The sauce certainly lived up to the hype.  Thankfully Chef Isabella included the recipe in his cookbook, and we can enjoy it at home.  Its super easy to make, and ridiculously good.  It makes quite a bit, and we've actually made 3 meals out of one batch of sauce.

Now, back to dinner.  We just piled everything into a bowl and were ready to eat!

I've been in a bit of a food coma for the last few hours, so its probably about time to head to bed and pass out.

Sunday Dinner

We usually take a bit of a break from cooking once the weekend hits, but tonight we got back in the kitchen for some lamb chops, beet greens, and roasted cauliflower.  We kept the lamb simple, seasoning them with a little salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary, and threw them on the grill pan.  Though things got a little smokey, we managed to not set off the smoke detector, and get some perfectly medium chops.

The beet greens were saved after making some beet chips earlier in the day.  More on those in a little bit though.  We just sauteed the greens with a little garlic, olive oil and butter.  I hadn't had them before, but they were really tasty...similar in texture to sauteed spinach, but they still had the sweetness of the beets.  The roasted cauliflower is one of our favorite side dishes.  We first had it at Graffiato, Mike Isabella's restaurant in DC.  The seasonal, Italian-inspired, small plates never disappoint.  We've made a few attempts at recreating this dish, and have come pretty close, considering the menu simply lists roasted cauliflower, mint and pecorino as the ingredients.  But now that Chef Isabella's cookbook is out, we have the recipe in hand.  Its super simple, and super tasty.  Between the 2 of us, we almost ate a ginormous head of cauliflower in one sitting.

are you drooling yet?

We capped it off with a little salad to finish off our creasy greens, topped with some red onion, chopped walnuts and gorgonzola.  We usually make our own dressing when we have salad.  In this case, we used some orange muscat champagne vinegar that we picked up on a recent expedition to Trader Joe's and some olive oil.  The sweetness and citrus was a perfect complement for our salad.

As for the beet chips I mentioned a little earlier...I like beets, but they aren't something I would normally buy. When I hear beets, I think back to my childhood and the cartoon "Doug".  The beauty of the CSA is that it gives you a chance to try something out of your normal routine.  So what were we to do with these beets?

We turned to our friend Gojee for some ideas.  If you haven't heard of Gojee, you need to check them out.  You can tell them what you're craving, what ingredients you have, ingredients you don't like, etc. and it will search the interwebs for recipes that fit your criteria.  That's how we stumbled upon the recipe for beet chips.  They couldn't be simpler: peel the beets, slice the beets, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and pop 'em in the oven.  

A simple, tasty and healthy little treat!  Now if only we could get a few more weekend days before heading back to work tomorrow.  The weekend always flies by too fast.