How to Make Seattle's Best Swedish Meatball

Gunnar and Birgitta Wallin's kottbullar was declared the city's best of the Swedish delicacy with a recipe that relied on excellence of form rather than fancy extras. Here's how they do it (with all those European hectogram and deciliter measurements converted to ease the culinary experience.)

You will need:
* A little less than a pound of beef ground together with just under a quarter pound of pork
* 2 to 3 boiled and cooled potatoes
* 1to 2 egg yolks
* A little less than 1/2 cup bread crumbs
* About 1 cup water (the Wallin's use Perrier, and they didn't have the only recipe that preferred carbonated water to the stuff from the tap, not sure why it's better, but they take those meatballs seriously so I'm inclined to go with it.)
* 2/3 cup cream
* 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons salt
* A dash of white pepper or paprika
* A pinch of all spice (dashes are bigger than pinches, both less than a quarter teaspoon)
* 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons shredded yellow onion or 2 tablespoons chopped butter-cooked yellow or red onion

Here's how you do it:
Place the bread crumbs in a bowl, add the water and set it aside. In another bowl, mash the potatoes and mix with the ground beef and pork mix. Add the egg yolks and some of the salt and spices. Work the mix while adding the bread and water a little at a time. Pour cream until you get the right consistency—something with meatball potential—and season with the onion and additional spice as needed. Roll into balls and fry.

In the words of the Wallins: "Voila! You have just created the tastiest meatball in the civilized world."

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What to do with all those hardboiled Easter eggs?

Image: www.mrbreakfast.com/images/g_70.jpg

Well, if you can bear to crack them — and this might involve some delicate negotiations among the artistes around your kitchen table — consider deviled eggs with an Indian kick.

After you've piped the standard mayo-mustard-yolk combo into the halved whites, sprinkle with kosher salt, and dribble a dot or two of Indian pickle onto the yolk.

Yes, it does take a little getting used to, this intense stuff, containing two less-than-common spices redolent with mineral flavor: asafoetida and fenugreek. Top with cilantro.

To find Indian pickle, check out The Souk, in Pike Place Market (click on "Manzoor Junejo, Owner of The Souk").

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Just Say Cheese

Last week, my buddy and I had the opportunity to be "Cheese Makers for a Day" at Beecher's Cheese in The Pike Place Market. We arrived just shy of 7:30am Saturday morning. Dressed in rubber boots, apron and hair net, we yearned to know more about the mystery behind the squeak of a cheese curd.

We were greeted by instructor and three year "Big Cheese" veteran; Blaine. Before entering the production facility, the theme to Lavern & Shirley cycled through my brain- but this was no Shotz Beer brewery! Cheese making has a certain hip factor to it. If I was going to be gawked at like a zoo animal for the market passersby, it was better that I was making cheese than fudge or kettle corn.

Upon our arrival, Blaine had just taken delivery of several thousand gallons of milk. A large hose was fed through a small opening in the building and connected to the truck. Milk was then pumped in through a hose into a large storage tank that heated the milk to a higher temperature; completing the pasteurization process. The pasteurized milk was then pumped into a large trough that could double as the city's largest stainless steel jacuzzi. Live cultures and rennet were added to the milk as the cooking temperature was raised. Stainless steel rakes, pulled by hand, were used to stir everything together. After about thirty minutes of the liquid setting, we pulled two cutting devices evenly through the trough, leaving a constancy of yogurt or tofu suspended in water. The "cutting the cheese" comments weren't as funny to the other staff, as they were to the two greenhorns; who seemed to be easily entertained throughout the day. Another thirty minutes passed and we were back to stirring and breaking up what looked to be a watery cottage cheese consistency. The mixture was transferred by hose to another nearby trough where the water was drained and the curding process began. By hand, we divided the cheese into two sections. As the water continued to drain, the curds began to shrink and stick together. We cut the cheese mass into smaller, workable sections so each segment could be flipped and stacked allowing more water to be released from the cheese. Much of the day was spent watching a clock and knowing when to stir, cut or turn. A large machine was wheeled into the room, as our slabs of cheese were fed into what I can only describe as a "cheese chipper" that cut the cheese into smaller pieces. Salt was added (29 pounds of it) and mixed throughout. This was now a finished cheese curd. We were each given a bag and told to take as much as we wanted (and a week later, I'm still eating cheese curds). Blaine explained to us to leave the curds out of the fridge for a few days and they would stay rubbery and squeaky. Refrigerating them will case the curds to bind together.

The final step was filling each mold with curds - called Hooping. Each of the molds were stacked six or seven high and 60 pounds of pressure squeezed the remaining water out of the cheese. The cheese is pressed 24 hour period before the rounds are removed, vacuum sealed and put in cold storage for one year. The result - Beecher's Flagship White Cheddar.

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Seattle's Best Swedish Meatball

I enjoyed happy hour at the Swedish Cultural Center this past Friday evening, when I was confronted with the above (awesome) image in the men's lavatory. The 411? If you think you've got Seattle's best Swedish meatball recipe, you've got until March 15 to submit it to this group, with 15 finalists squaring off in a "Meatball Showdown" on March 28. Meat out!

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Dogs' First Thanksgiving

OK, so Thursday wasn't actually my dogs' first Thanksgiving, but it was the first one where I brought them in on the festivities. I felt that they, too, needed to give thanks and partake in a bountiful feast.

So my husband and I came up with a feast fit for a dog: a chicken broth starter, followed by boiled chicken and rice, and homemade doggie treats stuck together with peanut butter for dessert.

The entire meal took about 40 minutes to prepare and about four minutes for them to devour. Way to give thanks, guys.

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Why did no one warn me about heritage vegetables?

Source: Carrot Museum UK (swear to god) 

A little background for those of you who aren't enthralled by the whole heirloom/variety produce thing: Carrots naturally come in many colors, and the orange varieties we eat are descended from ones bred by 16th-century Dutch horticulturalists intent on impressing the ruling House of Orange.

I certainly fall into the "why buy a regular tomato when you can buy a Hungarian green zebra tomato?" camp. I've bought purple carrots before for snacking—they have a nice herbaceous snap to them—but I picked up a bunch at the Ballard Farmers Market and decided that this time I would cook with them. Also in the basket: some frilly, delicate Russian kale. Carrots + kale + first day of fall = white-bean stew with greens. So I sauteed up my carrots with onions and celery, then added in chicken stock, beans, ham hock, etc.

No one had warned me that the anthocyanins in the purple carrots would turn the broth a purplish brown.

It looked, well, not natural. I looked around for a tomato to see if that would at least tint it red, but all I had was a black brandywine—also purple, and not as attractive as the photo in the link—plus some tomato paste. The combination of the two now gave the broth a murky reddish-purple color, and the beans, as they cooked, took on a purple-gray cast. Finally, I dumped in the kale, which flashed bright green before fading to black in about five minutes.

I once cooked an all-black-food spread for a Day of the Dead party, but I've never aimed for grayish purple with black stripes. Soup tastes fine, but instead of bringing some in for lunch, I think I'm going to have to eat it at home. By candlelight. A victim, once again, to my own pretensions.

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Blackberries on Acid

These blackberries are destined for cobbler, but I've got so many more secret stashes of blackberry bushes to loot that my jeans can only handle me eating so much more cobbler.

When my friend Lily gave me a bottle of her blackberry acid that she made last year, my picking fixation was renewed. Plus, it's weird, but I love making my own condiments. Blackberry acid is an intense berry sweet syrup you can use to make soda or flavor drinks. I don't like mine too sweet, so add more sugar if you do. But that would just screw up my simple formula.

In addition to sugar and blackberries, you need cheese cloth to keep out fruit flies and allow for escaping gases, and a glass receptacle big enough for the size of your batch. I use large glass pickle jars from my peeps at Specialty Bottle in Georgetown. My standard ratio for a batch of blackberry acid is 3-2-1 cups of blackberries, sugar, and water respectively. Add to this 2 tablespoons of tartaric acid* (I mix it with the sugar first).

Now dump it in the pickle jar, cover it with cheese cloth, put it in a cool, dark place (NW basements are perfect) and forget about it for a few days. Then press and strain out the large berry pieces and put it back in the jar, cover it and let it sit for another week or more. To really get knockout flavor, you've got to give the tartaric acid time—most recipes don't. Strain it into sterilized jars or bottles and cover securely (recycled screw cap wine bottles work great). Add it to seltzer, lemonade, ginger ale, or yogurt, whatever. Come November use it to treat you S.A.D. because sipping on this stuff is like fifteen minutes in the sun. It's also tasty in a gin and tonic... just use your imagination.

*Tartaric acid is an old-timey preservative that used to be common with canning mommas; you can purchase it in bulk foods stores or wine/beer making supply shops. I get mine HERE.

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Cookthink

I just heard about cookthink, a new recipe website that allows you to search for a recipe based on an ingredient, a type of dish, a certain cuisine, and/or a mood. As in, I'd like to eat something gratifying or humble or consoling. I think it's a fabulous idea; sometimes when I walk into the kitchen, the recipe I need has so much more to do with my emotion than a particular food group. I punched in chicken plus sexy and got a recipe for Latin Rice with Chicken Thighs. Whooo wheee, Chicken Shakira for dinner tonight! Moroccan plus tomatoes plus depressed yielded Moroccan Vegetable Stew. Perfect for a self-absorbed night on the couch.

But, uh, a warning: cookthink is definitely still beta. I entered figs and exotic and got a recipe for Asian mussels. I hope they'll keep chipping away at it until they get the code right; I think it could be quite useful!

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Cash Family Potato Salad

Fellow SW music writer Aja Pecknold and myself recently became mutually obsessed with the idea of starting a regular column featuring recipes by musicians. Sound Bite is finally off the ground and I encourage you to check out the first two installments, including Justin Deary of Whalebones’ "Wizard Gator Sweet Potatator Tacos with Hexa Fresh Guacamole," and "Prosciutto Prawns" by the Cave Singers' Derek Fudesco. Future entries will include Tex-Mex 101 from former Austinite Ian Moore, and hopefully Phil Wandascher's Southern methodology for smoking brisket (I'm still trying to wrestle that one from him). All this talk about music and food has had me thinking about whose kitchen I'd like to spend time in, and it's safe to say that the Cash family is at the top of the list. I recently came across this recipe for Rosanne Cash's Potato Salad, and though it's pretty basic, it's also rather perfect. I made it last weekend and it hit the ideal level of marination about 36 hours later:

3 pounds red-skinned potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 1-inch pieces

8 dill pickle spears, coarsely chopped (about 1-1/2 cups)

3 celery stalks, chopped (about 1 cup)

1 medium-sized red onion, chopped (about 1 cup)

5 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

3/4 cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

Cook potatoes in salted water until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain well and cool. Transfer potatoes to large bowl. Stire in dill pickles, celery, onion, eggs, mayonnaise, and mustardSeason with salt and pepper (I took the liberty of garnishing it with chives). 

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I Can't Believe I Made Butter!

I'm bringing the dairy industry to its knees!

After reading an article in the July 1 issue of NY Times Magazine about how painfully simple it is to make your own butter, I had to try it.

Last night, with my hands deep inside a ball of thickening cream, I found Nirvana.

There are only two ingredients: heavy whipping cream, and salt, which is optional. The process is basically over-whipping the cream till it turns yellowish, and the buttermilk separates from the, yes, butter. Then strain the liquid, and kneed the remaining mass until it's "dense and creamy." The Times' recipe (now only available Online to TimesSelect subscribers) called for six cups, but I only had four, which turned out to be plenty, especially for a first try. CookingForEngeniers.com has a similar process, and includes notes on adding ingredients.

As proud as I am of my first batch (I've eaten probably 6 buttery rolls in less than 24 hours), I'm already planning my follow-up: a pinch more salt, buy a finer strainer (if one exists), and buy cookie-cutter type shapes to pour the butter into, to give it some personality.

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