Zatar Spiced Meatballs

Sorry for the lag in posting, but I jumped at an opportunity in Chicago and will be here for the summer. Most of it is exciting, though trying to navigate a new city is challenging in ways I hadn't expected. I got accustomed to having a decent grasp of grocery store isles and that has gone out the window. It took me 4x longer to buy a basket's worth of food because I had no idea where things were and kept finding new products and needing to pour over the fine print. I am excited about upcoming farmers markets and finding some specialty stores.

In the kitchen I have had a few dinner success; last night was an impromptu aloo mattar with brown rice that turned a few left over potatoes and half a bag of frozen peas into a great meal. Last week I made pupusas for the first time.

Tonight I embarked on Zatar spiced meatballs. This isn't much of a recipe, its more of a list of things I through together, but I am actually proud of this fact. Throwing things together in a bowl/pot/pan was how I used to cook and doing it more and more often know makes me feel like I am getting my kitchen fingers back.

Inspired by some delicious zatar I picked up at The Spice House in Evanston, IL, I decided to modified the lamb meatball recipe I made in January, and worked off this Food&Wine recipe to create dinner.

Zatar (also spelled Za'atar, satar, zahtar or zatr) is a blend of herbs, sesame seeds and dried sumac. I love it sprinkled atop hummus, but I always think of Lebanese flat bread, that my mom brought home from the deli, smeared with olive oil and zatar when the spice is mentioned. I think missing that bread might inspire my next baking project... but back to dinner!

Zatar spiced meatballs
-diced 1/4 an onion
-minced 1 clove garlic
-cumin
-zatar spice [WARNING - many zatar spice blends contain roasted wheat as an ingredient. Please read carefully!]
-salt and pepper
-1lb. ground chuck

The mixture wasn't coming together too well, so I added in 1 egg to help bind everything together.
Then I formed them into meatballs:

I pan fried them in a tablespoon of olive oil, drained them and served them up.

I added lime juice to some hummus and served it with the meatballs on a corn tortilla with a slice of pickle - hot sauce on the side, a bit reminiscent of the falafel at Rami's in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, MA. For some crunch, there is cumin slaw and a watermelon & feta salad on the side.

Cumin Slaw
-head of cabbage, sliced thin
-half lime juice, half apple cider vinegar to coat cabbage
-a few pinches of salt (this is less than you think you need, its ok)
-whole cumin seeds (to taste)
Toss well to combine. This tastes better the next day.

Watermelon & Feta Salad - this is something I saw on Top Chef last season and thought was weird sounding, but always wanted to try. A sale on whole watermelons, $2.99 at Stanley's, sealed the deal. (Stanley's is seriously the most amazing place I have been to in a long time! They have the cheapest produce I have ever seen. The organic section is often way cheaper than the conventional. I was in sensory overload, and loved ever second.)
For the salad I...
-watermelon cubed
-chopped or crumbled feta
-thinly sliced onions (I used Vidalia)
-balsamic vinegar and olive oil to coat, really just a little because the watermelon will weep
-a few pinches of salt and black pepper

Dinner was a success and there is enough for left overs!

Capone Foods

A place known for its fresh pasta might not be on the top of your list of go-to places, but Capone Foods in Union Square in Somerville, MA should be. Small and narrow, the shop is packed to the gills with homemade and imported foodstuffs to tickle the taste buds. A cheese case, meat case, freezer and fridge filled with fresh pastas and sauces just make up one side of the store. The other is floor-to-ceiling oils, vinegars, olives, mushrooms and beverages - all things you did not know you needed but feel compelled to take home. I made a visit this past weekend, with a goal in mind but came out with something I did not expect--perhaps its a contradiction but perhaps it is the reason I go into small, specialty markets in the first place.

I stopped in Sunday and the owner, Albert, stands behind the counter with a smile beaming through his mustache and urges me to taste a new red wine vinegar. (It is good, surprisingly good. Sweeter and complicated than 89 cent stuff I have at home and it makes me wonder how I have made a salad with anything else. $12.95 a bottle tells me why, and that I won't be bringing it home today, but most certainly will be back.)

I ask if he carries abbrusseze, and an eyebrow goes up. He responds no, but have I tried this salame, and offers me a slice. It is better than it looks, and it looks beautiful. No two are perfectly alike and there is a nice dry, white mold on the outside and it smell cave-aged. Its looks were not deceiving. I gush over its tenderness and he smiles widens. We discuss the shop, the neighborhood and where one does find obscure, dried sausages.

The conversation meanders a bit more about different products -their pasta and why I am not buying any - and I mention I used to work at a specialty food store and he insists I try his sun dried tomatoes in olive oil. I tell him they are not my favorite things, but he picks one up with tongs, out of a long glass vase and holds it out towards me with pride. I gingerly grasp it between two fingers and take a bite. The tomatoes were soft, not leathery and sweet. Before I go, he insists that I try some of their pesto, on the house.

I was so excited to go home and try out new foods and cooking techniques (the pesto warns DO NOT HEAT) and figure out how to make a meal out of these new treats.

***

I tried there house made sun dried tomato pesto last night; it was better than I anticipated (I had set the bar pretty high). My big gripe with sun dried tomatoes is that they can get bitter; this pesto not taste bitter at all. I place the semi-thawed pesto atop the hot pasta and allowed it to melt gently. It was bright, not too oily and clung nicely to my rice pasta, making for a delicious dinner and left over.
The container says not to heat the pesto - but cold rice pasta is gritty and disgusting, so I gently warmed it in the microwave.

I ate it with a salad and a few slices of the salame. Columbus artisan salames are gluten free and amazing. Not overly salted or seasoned, with a nice mix of fat and meat, but the real treat was the beautiful rind. I tried the smaller, harder cacciatore, that was beautiful. It has the texture of an abbrusseze, but much milder.