cooking blog – The High Heeled C*ntessa

What are polpette you ask? They’re basically a croquette – a fried meatball, wherein the meat is mixed with mashed potatoes, bread crumbs, and a bunch of seasonings and/or cheese. Oftentimes, they are stuffed with cheese, so that when you bit into it warm, it oozes out of the center. In a word, they are delicious.

Polpette are the authentic, Italian version of the bastardized Italian-American meatball. The ‘meatball’ as we know it here in the U.S., is the result of Italian immigrants making use of the abundance of meat that was readily available in every butcher shop or grocery when they moved from the homeland to New York/Brooklyn, etc.. If anyone enjoys food documentaries or cooking shows as much as I do, I highly recommend “Food on the Go.” It’s a documentary that is currently available on Netflix and is all about the evolution of Italian food into American-Italian food as we know it today! It was really informative and made me hungry for pasta, calamari, and meatballs.

The finished product: I used turkey and mashed potatoes to make these polpette, which I stuffed with mozzarella (recipe is below) – they can be served with a side of marinara or not… they’re equally delicious either way

Polpette, since they are prepared like a croquette, can be comprised of a variety of ingredients – anything from fish, veal, mortadella, or even squid. What really distinguished this ball, is the fact that it combines mashed potatoes with the protein and is fried. They originated in ancient Roman times, and today they are served as appetizers, snacks or bar food all over Italy, however, they are especially popular in Venice where you might take them as cicchetti, with a glass of afternoon wine. My favorite activity in Venice is probably sampling the variety of cicchetti each bar has to offer while drinking far too much red wine… and it’s so cheap compared to the U.S…. you don’t have to worry about breaking the bank.

Venice – I snapped this pic crossing a bridge on the way to one of my (three) favorite cicchetti bars

View from a little cicchetti bar we randomly stumbled upon while shopping… it was a Monday or Tuesday afternoon so the street was empty… nothing better than a leisurely glass of vino at 2pm when everyone else is working

To make the best possible polpette or meatballs, you should hypothetically use a combination of ground beef, ground pork, and/or veal. I don’t support the veal industry because it’s totally fucked up, and I also don’t like buying ground pork anymore because it’s impossible to find organic and ethical pig meat (unless it comes from a super small farming operation, industrial pig farms are not OK). I used turkey instead (I’m sure it was still abused, but at least it claimed itself to be cage-free, hormone free, antibiotic free, etc…). It’s pretty tasty and stays moist when combined with the milk-soaked bread crumbs and eggs.

INGREDIENTS:

2 Idaho potatoes (these will be peeled, cut, boiled, and mashed)
1-1.5 lbs. meat of your choice (turkey, or any combination of beef, pork, or veal if you’re a real sadist)
1/2 cup milk
2 slices of white bread, or baguette, or any white-ish bread you have
2 eggs
2 cups seasoned bread crumbs
1 cup finely grated Parmesan or pecorino cheese
2 Tbs. freshly chopped parsley
1 ball fresh mozzarella, cut into cubes
Salt (add to desired taste)
Pepper (add to desired taste)
Granulated garlic ( ” ” )
Dried Basil ( ” ” )
Onion Powder ( ” ” )
Dried oregano ( ” ” )
Olive oil or canola oil for frying

DIRECTIONS:

Use the potatoes to make mashed potatoes (peel, cut into large chunks, and boil in salted water until penetrable with the tines of a fork… usually 15-20 min)
You can go ahead and season the potatoes as you normally would with mashed potatoes – a generous cube of butter, salt, granulated garlic and pepper

The key to really good mashed potatoes, is leaving some of the potato water you boiled them in in the pot… not enough to make them watery though

Set potatoes aside in a large bowl – the bowl needs to be big enough for the meat to be mixed in, along with all of the other seasonings.
While the potatoes cool, chop up the parsley, which you will be adding into the mix.
Chop up the mozzarella into small cubes and set aside – you will use this to stuff the polpette when the time comes:

Next, in a separate bowl, crumble/rip up the two pieces of white bread and pour the milk over them – there should be enough liquid that it is all absorbed and all the crumbs are saturated

White bread breadcrumbs soaking in milk ^^^ this helps keep the ballz extra moist 😉

Now it’s time to combine all of the ingredients – add the meat, eggs, seasonings, milk-soaked bread crumbs, grated cheese, and fresh parsley to the big bowl holding the mashed potatoes
Set aside 1 cup of bread crumbs – you will roll the balls in this reserve before frying
Add 1 cup of the breadcrumbs to the mixture and dig in! You have to use your hands – it’s impossible to do it right with a spoon. Make sure everything is thoroughly mixed – especially the eggs and breadcrumbs.
Heat up the oil in a large sauce pan/frying pan over low-medium heat – you should use enough oil that bottom of the pan is covered.
Now for the really fun part – making the ballz! Grab a small handful of the meat mixture and form it into a thick patty on your palm

The “patty” with the mozzarella in the center – next you’ll shape the meat over the mozzarella as if you’re making something with playdough

Before rolling the patty into a ball, place a cube of mozzarella in the center.
Form the meat around the cheese center, and roll into a ball
Roll the polpette in a light layer of breadcrumbs before placing in the frying pan
You can make all of the balls and set on a plate so that they’re ready to go at the same time into the frying pan, although it is unlikely that they will all fit at the same time, so you’ll probably have to do two or three batches.
Heat the over to 350 degrees and get a large baking sheet or casserole dish ready to place the fried balls in (I finish them in the oven to ensure they’re thoroughly cooked and not overly browned)
Fry the polpette over low-medium heat in the saucepan, turning with a spoon or fork to ensure all sides are evenly browned.
As they are browned on each side, remove from saucepan and place on baking sheet/casserole dish

Before going into the oven to finish cooking – notice how they’re browned on all sides… I like to sprinkle a little more chopped parsley on them for extra flavor and aesthetics

The polpette will only need about 15 minutes in the oven before they’re fully cooked through and ready to serve! These are great to re-heat the next day as well (or the next or the next… they can also be frozen)!

What a week it’s been… I can’t wait to be home-home (aka my parent’s house) for some quality R&R. Work was insane this week, and the cold made it impossible to get any walking done. I will miss my cat immensely while I’m gone – I’m riding home dirty on the Greyhound bus instead of the train, so he unfortunately has to stay here all weekend (they only allow pets on MetroNorth and NJTransit). He loves being at my parent’s house 😦 … poor thing 😦

Peep’s new cat tree – this is basically the face I made every time my phone rang at work today…

I am also looking forward to my hair appointment tomorrow to get some red low-lights added in. My hair has been going white, probably from stress. I’m not old enough for white hair yet… fuck that shit. I’ll just enhance my natural color and tell the hairdresser to concentrate the color near the front of my face where the whites are coming in hot and heavy.

Dude, it is SO F*CKING COLD…. and I am one of the few people who actually LIKES COLD!!!! It is not as cold in NYC as it is in the Mid-West right now, so I really shouldn’t be complaining. I also have a roof over my head, warm clothes, and food and wine to keep me warm and fed, so I should consider myself fortunate. I do wish I had a fireplace though, and maybe the option to call out of work tomorrow. Also, I wish I had a hot tub, some Manitobah Mukluks, and a snow suit, but I digress (next year, Santa…… 😉 )

I can’t stop dwelling on feral cats and stray dogs right now. I don’t think there are really that many stray dogs in NYC (it’s not Greece after all…), but there are probably scumbags who tie their dogs outside… I hope no one is heartless or ignorant enough to do that in this weather. I hope that all of the poor cats living on the streets were able to find some sort of shelter or slightly warmer place to hide out until this cold passes through – it’s devastatingly brutal. I have more empathy towards animals than I do humans, and I always will. A human can at least ask for help if they need it, and even homeless people have resources available when the weather is this brutal. Animals can’t ask for help or just walk into a shelter for the night. I just wish I could save all the homeless cats and dogs from life on the streets. I used to do my part by fostering cats, but that didn’t work out so well after about a year with two ferals who hid under my bed and had diarrhea issues non-stop. And all of this was DESPITE me starving to death on my lowly server’s salary while spending all my hard earned cash on the most expensive cat food available… good times.

The cold would be so much more tolerable if it were also snowing right now. We had about five minutes of snow this afternoon and that was that. It’s the only snow NYC has gotten all winter, and next week the temperature is back up into the 50s. Will we ever get snow this year? At least I’m guaranteed to have some snow when I’m at my parent’s house this weekend. Why am I writing about weather? Because I’m a loser baby.

The only upside of the cold, or going out-on-the-town in the cold, is wearing my pimp furs… I have one in almost every color now… perfect for warehouse parties and after hours 😉

I made a delicious bean chili last night, but it didn’t photograph well and is frankly a bit boring to write about. Not much of creative / hands-on process goes into making chili. I did, however, make a delicious chicken cordon bleu this past Sunday night. Although that also photographed rather unfortunately. It tasted amazing though (yes, I had to go “sometimes-etarian” and at least try it…).

Not the comeliest plating, but it was moist, flavorful, and all around delicious. Served with baked potatoes and Brussels

INGREDIENTS (** recipe below will make 4 servings):

1 1/2 – 2 lbs. of boneless, skinless chicken breast (organic, free-range, antibiotic and hormone free… some Gwyneth Paltrow approved shit… preferably raised and killed by your own hand)
2 cups Panko bread crumbs
1 cup shredded gruyere cheese
4 pieces of thinly sliced prosciutto (cooked, thinly sliced ham will substitute if your local grocery doesn’t carry proscuitto)
1 cup flour (for rolling chicken in)
2 well-beaten eggs
Salt, pepper, granulated garlic to taste
Olive oil (to coat baking pan and also drizzle over chicken)
Plastic wrap

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Set up your breading station: flour seasoned with salt and pepper (in a bowl), beaten eggs (in a bowl), and panko bread crumbs seasoned with granulated garlic, salt and pepper (also in a bowl)

This is the “breading station”: chicken rolls will first be rolled in flour, then egg, then the panko breadcrumbs before going into the baking pan (coated with olive oil) – season the flour and the panko bread crumbs with salt, pepper, and granulated garlic for maximum flavor

Place chicken in between two sheets of plastic wrap, one on the bottom and one on top, beat the chicken gently (LOL) with a meat hammer or a rolling pin

Next, you’re going to “fill” the chicken before rolling it up… place the prosciutto down first (one sheet per chicken cutlet) followed by the shredded gruyere

After the “prosciutto” (why do I hear Giada De Laurentiis voice saying this?) and gruyere are placed on the chicken, it is time to roll them up! Start on one end and roll it up like you would a piece of paper or sleeping bag… it should be rolled pretty tightly
Tightly wrap each finished roll in plastic wrap to help keep the shape and place in the fridge for 15 minutes

These are the pre-breaded chicken rolls, about to go into the fridge before taking a dip in the egg/breading

After you take the rolls out of the fridge, unwrap and bread one by one, placing the finished product into your baking pan (flour first, than into the egg, than rolled in the panko crumbs)
Drizzle the tops of the rolls with olive oil (this will help the breadcrumbs brown up nicely – you can also use little slices of butter on top in place of oil)

These are the stuffed and breaded chicken rolls, about to go into the oven

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 (since the chicken is pounded pretty thin, you shouldn’t need to bake much longer… maybe 35 minutes depending on how browned the breadcrumbs are looking)
To serve, cut the roll into slices so you can see that nice cross-section/swirl of ham and melted cheese; serve with a veggie or salad on the side!

I probably won’t be doing much cooking this weekend since I’m going to my parent’s to dog-sit/cat-sit the family pets. I will be doing some “meal prep” (ew…) tomorrow and Friday though, so that the fridge is full while I am away – otherwise a certain someone will eat pizza, burgers, and not a single goddamn vegetable all weekend.

I mean, who doesn’t love pizza? I almost finished off a whole one last Saturday… my new favorite pizza is from a place down the street called Chiara’s… so good

I’ll probably try to be somewhat healthy this weekend while I am at my parent’s house since my bday is fast approaching, and I will want to dress in some scandalous outfit if I go out to celebrate.

I’m sure the fridge at my parent’s house is already chock-full of my favorite foods waiting for me to devour them – that’s how they do, loading up the fridge and cupboards with my favorite things before I come home. I’ll end up sabotaging myself with a brick of pepper jack cheese from Pine Ridge and lobster mac and cheese from Wegman’s.

Oh well 🙂

Tag: cooking blog

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