Lena was all over this and declared it the best Sunday dinner ever. She started by plucking the leaves of 2 sticks of rosemary.
Then she cut up 1 1/2 big onions. (The recipe asks for 2, but we truly believe that these North Carolina onions are just humongous).
We looked for Worcestshire Sauce and
started frying up the onions in a little olive oil.
Lena added 2 tablespoons of the sauce and a splash of water. We cooked it all for 20 minutes.
Then we let the onions cool and spiked them up with a little salt and pepper.
Lena got 1 pound of ground beef and 1 pound of ground pork in a bowl.
Then we whizzed up a few slices of stale bread in a food processor and
added a handful of breadcrumbs and the onions to the beef.
Lena mixed it all up and
formed
16
meatballs.
Next we cut up 3 oz of cheddar cheese into 16 chunks.
Then Lena pushed little holes into the meat balls and
stuck the cheese into their centers.
Yum. We popped them into the fridge.
(Lena said to make sure to write in the blog that you want to make nice big holes in the meatballs with two fingers and just let the cheese fall in. So there. Consider it written.)
Meanwhile, for the gravy, we fried up 7 oz of more ground beef in a little olive oil.
While the meat was browning we sliced up about a 3/4 onion and the leaves of 2 more sticks of rosemary.
Next we rummaged for an Indian Pale Ale, a veggie broth cube (we couldn't find a decent beef bullion that wasn't full of ingredients we couldn't decipher), English Mustard (Well honestly, we had no idea what exactly English Mustard was. We grabbed one that was called "Sir Kensington", which sounded English enough, but turned out to have a French flag emblazoned on it.), blueberry jam (It was supposed to be black currant jam; we tried, but couldn't find any.), flour, and malt vinegar.
Lena added the broth cube and 3/4 cups of the beer to the meat and gave the rest to Papa for good luck.
We let it all cook in for a while and then added the rest.
When the oven was ready we added the meatballs over a drizzle of olive oil, leaving some space around each.
After 20 minutes in the oven we smothered them in our gravy and put the gooey goodness back in for another 5 minutes.
We covered them with water and cooked them with a little salt.
When they were soft we chucked in a few pieces of butter, some grated nutmeg, and a good bit of heavy cream.
Lena mashed it all up.
To round up the affair we also sliced a handful of carrots, cooked them in butter and salt until they started to get soft, caramelized them with a little sugar, and finsihed it all off with a bit of ground coriander seeds.
Bam! Look at it. Absolute delicious scrumptiousness. It doesn't get much better than this when you are asking for a little snug comfort. Thank you Jamie Oliver.
