I am going to bore you with a recipe. There are several reasons for this:
1) I’ve actually had a request for more of hannaH’s Foodie Blogs. Of course, the requester only requested them because s/he (gender omitted to protect the guilty) finds them easy to ridicule, but que sera, etc.
2) This one worked out really well and I’m proud of it.3) There’s only so much one can write about creek walking, no matter how fundamentally adorable one’s fellow adventurers are.
4) If I don’t write this recipe down, I’ll forget it. And if I do write it down, I’ll forget where I put it. But if I blog it and forget it, I can always ask you all about it the next time I want to make it. Brilliant!
If I continue this trend of sporadic foodie blogging, I think I’m going to need a rating scale to show difficulty/time involved in making whatever I’ve been making. To that end, I present the Merovingian Scale; where One Merovingian is the amount of time and effort a normal human being could be expected to commit to cooking supper after coming home from a hard day of screwing around on Facebook at the office--say up to 45 minutes-- and Five Merovingians is the amount of time and effort it takes a crazed Julia Child stalker to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for ten people--say 5 hours. The following recipe will rate Two Merovingians: not what you’d call “dashed together,” but no restraining orders from Julia Child either. (Yes, I know she’s dead.)
hannaH’s Ratatouille Meatball Stew
You will need:
1 small zucchini
1 small banana squash
1 small to medium eggplant
1 medium sweet yellow onion
A can of diced stewed tomatoes
A quart of V-8
A quart of water
1/4 to 1/2 box of Barilla (or other) Orzo pasta (depending on how thick you want your stew)
3 bay leaves
1 Tbs. chopped garlic (the jar kind is fine)
1 Tbs. salt
2 tsp pepper (or to taste)
1 Tbs. of olive oil
4 Tbs. of butter
1 medium egg
About 10 crackers, crushed
1 lb. (I used Jimmy Dean) sage sausage
Grated parmesan cheese and caesar or sea salt croutons for garnish
Start off by cutting off 1/3 of your onion and chopping it fine. Sauté this in one of your Tbs. of butter. Simultaneously boil your orzo as the package directs with a Tbs. of olive oil to prevent clumping.
While the orzo boils, combine sage sausage, egg, cracker crumbs, and the sautéed, finely chopped onion, and squish it all up with your hands. Set that mixture aside. Chase your five year old son or some other convenient relation around the house threatening to wipe your hands in his hair.
Chop your remaining onion coarsely, your eggplant into inch squares, your zucchini and squash into semicircles and start to sauté them with the remaining butter. Don’t forget to take the Orzo off the heat at some point before it turns into a solid block.
Dump V-8, water, bay leaves, garlic, salt, pepper, canned tomatoes, and orzo into a big soup pot, and place on medium heat. If the veggies have sautéed for 5 to 8 minutes, dump them in too.
Start rolling your meat concoction into smallish (1 inch) balls, which you will brown in the veggie skillet after you dump the veggies into the stew pot. Brown the meatballs in the covered skillet on low medium heat (4ish) for about 10 to 15 minutes, rolling them occasionally by flailing the skillet around like a spasmodic.
Dump them into the stew pot. If the veggies are sufficiently cooked and the whole shebang is hot, you can eat it. Garnish with grated parmesan cheese and croutons, and pair with garlic bread and your favorite red wine, or beer.
While the orzo boils, combine sage sausage, egg, cracker crumbs, and the sautéed, finely chopped onion, and squish it all up with your hands. Set that mixture aside. Chase your five year old son or some other convenient relation around the house threatening to wipe your hands in his hair.
Chop your remaining onion coarsely, your eggplant into inch squares, your zucchini and squash into semicircles and start to sauté them with the remaining butter. Don’t forget to take the Orzo off the heat at some point before it turns into a solid block.
Dump V-8, water, bay leaves, garlic, salt, pepper, canned tomatoes, and orzo into a big soup pot, and place on medium heat. If the veggies have sautéed for 5 to 8 minutes, dump them in too.
Start rolling your meat concoction into smallish (1 inch) balls, which you will brown in the veggie skillet after you dump the veggies into the stew pot. Brown the meatballs in the covered skillet on low medium heat (4ish) for about 10 to 15 minutes, rolling them occasionally by flailing the skillet around like a spasmodic.
Dump them into the stew pot. If the veggies are sufficiently cooked and the whole shebang is hot, you can eat it. Garnish with grated parmesan cheese and croutons, and pair with garlic bread and your favorite red wine, or beer.
If you’re feeling adventurous, add a half cup of cooking sherry to the above and allow it to boil a couple minutes just for kicks.
Unless you have more hands and/or presence of mind than I do, this whole business takes something on the order of an hour and fifteen minutes. I think I’ve spent that long typing this out, but Joe pronounced it extremely edible, so I’m hoping that if you try it, you like it too. I even tried to make the instructions somewhat instructive! So if it doesn't make any sense, that's probably why. Slainte, or bon apetite, or cheers, or whatever!
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