Practising what I preached...

I finished Food Matters yesterday and while I still think it could have been more soundly written from a scientific point of view, that's not really the point of the book. Bittman provides enough information to those who are uninitiated in this whole 'food matters' debate that they can be convinced of his arguments' merits, but his focus is really on showing you how to make changes to your eating habits which he insists will benefit you, your pocket and the environment. So whereas Michael Pollan is all about science and fact, Bittman is all about the food. I think the books complement each other in that respect: if you've read In Defence of Food, you could then use Food Matters to help you actually make some real changes.

Now, as we know, I'm not very good at using new recipes - I read them, and ponder on them and enjoy having them around me, but I often do little more than that. Last night for dinner we were scheduled (yes, I make a weekly meal plan) to have meatballs and spaghetti. This is one of my standard meals, and in general it is one which I think fits with Bittman's overall approach - you make a smallish quantity of meat go a lot further and by serving wee balls on top of pasta, you actually need less of the meat to feel satisfied. I do have my own recipe for meatballs which I've honed for years and which both the lad and I really like, but Bittman has another version in his book, so I thought I ought to give that a try last night. I have altered his quantities and spices a bit, and the resulting recipe is below.

NB. This will make a GIANT quantity of meatballs. Seriously - from 500g of meat you will have enough to easily feed 8 people for dinner. Throw a salad and some garlic bread on the side and you could probably stretch it even further. With the recipe below, I made 66 decent sized meatballs last night. My freezer is literally packed full of the leftovers! Plus using bulgar instead of breadcrumbs (which is the normal approach) means that you add fibre to the mix and that has the overall function of lowering the fat. I was a wee bit dubious about how the texture of the meatballs would be, but they were really nice and very tasty. Win, win, win, win!


Bittman and Bain's Meatballs
500g ground meat (he says turkey, but that's a v American vibe. I used half pork mince and half beef...both welfare approved, obviously).
1 cup bulgar wheat (here's where we vary. He said to use 2 cups of bulgar for half the above quantity of meat. That would make them wheatballs and they wouldn't stick together. He also doesn't list whether that should be dried or soaked. So, I soaked 1 cup of dried bulgar for 30 mins in boiling water, drained it throughly and used that amount for the 500g meat. These are good proportions)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced very finely
2 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
spinach - as much as you've got but anything between 250-500g will work
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary and thyme
2 tsp salt
black pepper
1 free-range egg

Soak the bulgar as described above, drain and add to the meats. Heat the olive oil and saute onion and garlic until soft. Add spinach and cook until wilted. Add this mixture along with the egg and seasonings to the meat and bulgar. Mix thoroughly with your hands until kneaded/combined. At this point I fried a small mini-meatball in the pan I'd used for the onions, to test the seasonings.
Roll into balls, place on baking sheet and bake at 200g for about 20 mins. Eat in whatever style you prefer. We had ours with tomato sauce - I simmered the baked meatballs for about 5 mins in the sauce before serving over spaghetti.

If you have used meat that hasn't been pre-frozen, you can then freeze the uncooked meatballs. If it was frozen already (as in my case) then cook them all, and freeze them cooked. To freeze, place separated meatballs on a lined baking tray in the freezer overnight. In the morning transfer the frozen balls to a bag and voila - free-flow meatballs for the next month! :-)