fried meatballs

It’s a testament to how much we actually managed to eat during the holidays that when I sat down at my computer today  and saw these photographs I could barely believe I had actually decided to make fried meatballs for lunch one day. Really. I saw these pictures and thought “who is this person?”

Because, usually, I am not the kind of person who just decided to fry something for lunch. And this was a week day, for gods sake. But….all rules fly out the window during the holidays in Italy. From December 24 up until January 7, every day pretty much seems like Sunday. And so, last Tuesday, it was fried meatballs for lunch just because.

Actually, there were a couple of becauses. First of all I had a lot of left over boiled meat to deal with. We’d had bolitto misto for Christmas Lunch in Bari. The first course was tortellini in brodo, and the second was the beautiful mixture of boiled meats – hen, turkey , veal and beef – served with salsa verde and frutta mostarda.

Since Domenico’s mom doesn’t eat that much, we lugged most of the leftovers home with us to Rome. Which is how I’d ended up with this plate of meat. My first thought was to make Picchiapo’, a Roman dish that turns leftover boiled meat into a one dish meal with tomatoes and onions.

Roman’s are good with using up leftovers this way. But since I’d already made and written about Picchiapo’ here on the blog, I decided to venture into new territory, trying out another ‘leftovers’ recipe: polpettine fritti.  So yes, the fact that I ended up making fried meatballs was purely to please you. You’re welcome. 

But the home made mayonaise to accompany them? That’s not so traditional, and that was made purely to please us.

Although I’m calling these meatballs, you’ll notice that they are not ball-shaped at all. For this dish, in Rome, the polpettine are always small and  patty-shaped. I think this is because they are easier to fry, and get very crisp.

Since so much other good things go into the polpettine, it’s a perfect way to use up the meat for any kind of broth you’ve made, even if you think it may be a bit over cooked and lacking in texture. Also? you can  throw in the carrot and potatoes as well. It’s all good.

I’m not sure how I made the decision to serve them with home made mayonnaise, but it was a good one. The side was a crisp radicchio salad.

And don’t worry. Next week it’ll be back to salads for the new year. On my plate, and on the blog.

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fried meatballs

Author Elizabeth

Yield 4

The following recipe is vague, because really, it’s all about using leftovers. So you can play around with the amounts.

Ingredients

• 1 pound boiled meat, with any vegetables that went into the broth too (carrot, potato)
• 1 slice of day old bread, soaked in milk
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
• salt, pepper
• Bread crumbs
• oil for frying

Instructions

1. Make sure to get all of the bones out of your boiled meats. Place the meat in a bowl of a food processor, and pulse until the meat is ground and approaching the paste stage.
2. Place the meat in a bowl and add t, cheese, egg, parsley and seasonings. Squeeze the milk out of the bread and add that too, crumbling it up. Using your hands, mix well.
3. Form into small, 2 1/2 inch patties. Coat each patty in breadcrumbs and set aside.
4. Pour oil (I used half olive oil and half sunflower seed oil) into a large frying pan, so that it comes up about 1 inch from the bottom. Heat until hot, and add the patties. You’ll probably have to do this in several batches, since you don’t want to crowd them. Flip them half way through, to brown evenly on both side. They should only take about 6 minutes total to cook through. (remember, the meat is already cooked).
5. As they are finished, place them on a paper-towel covered plate.
6. Serve while hot. I served them with a crisp radicchio salad and home made mayonnaise.