October: time for comfort food

I've been terrible at menu planning lately. There was all the fritters and now I'm having a week that's basically pasta with sausage. Indeed yesterday's dinner was in fact sausage pasta, though it's a Clair Thomson recipe that includes saffron and orange zest for a sort of pretend adulting (in New Kitchen Basics, if you want a simple dinner faintly poshed up). 

But then, it's autumn. It's going to pour tomorrow. Kent is about to leave the UK. Family Christmas jittering has begun - I think we're going to be spared a genuinely stupid mass gathering, but possibly several small ones which means I now need to buy presents for 17 people (or 18 if you include the toddler, but at least he's easy). Pointless last night was bumped onto BBC2 which is never a good sign. Plus, it's vegan week next week, so a slight overindulgence in mince this week isn't the end of the world. 

(Not when it's up against *so much competition* for the end of the world. We all saw that the British juniper crop is threatened so there's a gin crisis looming, right? Of all the times...)

ANYWAY, we can't be downhearted just because everything is absolutely bloody terrible. Heads up (I will remind you all again): we're going to have a brownie/blondie cookalong on 17th October. I will be online from 3.30, twittering gently, under #ConfinedCookalong, and I hope at some point that afternoon some of you will be able to join me. I don't think we need all start at the same time. Recipe of your choice, of course. Ruth's is apparently foolproof, and comes with a Confined Kitchen seal of authenticity. Or bake something else, don't cook anything and come for the company, as you please.

Tonight, in a startling turn, I'm making meatballs in tomato sauce. Ottolenghi meatballs, mind you. Beef, ricotta and oregano ones.

You can probably guess how this goes. Onion, garlic and some fresh oregano, chopped. Put half of it into a saucepan, sweat it for a bit, and then a tin of tomatoes on that, and cook it down for a while. Add some stock early on and then some more when you add the meatballs, for some reason. Just leave it bubbling while you're faffing with the meatballs.

Though the meatballs are relatively easy: the rest of the onion, garlic, oregano, finely chopped and mixed with beef mince, an egg, some parmesan, some breadcrumbs and a tub of ricotta (was meant to be 250g ricotta for 500g beef, but it never works out that way). Squinch it together, make it into about 12 meatballs and fry them.

 The recipe promises that the meatballs are made "deliciously light" by the ricotta. If you're a grizzled old kitchen hand you will read that and think suspicious thoughts about whether that means they are an absolute pain to fry. Reader, I am, I did, I made the recipe anyway, and they absolutely bloody were. Ugh. Frizzled mince all over the place. I'm glad I didn't get impatient and try to jam all the mixture into the pan in one. That would have been one burnt mincecake, I think. 

 

Once lightly fried, they go into the tomato sauce, which needs enough stock to pretty much cover them at this point. Bring to the boil, then very gently simmer about 30 minutes. 

You needn't serve them with pasta, but I needed freezer space (I've still got a paranoid loaf-and-pint quarantine situation going on there) so exhumed some linguine and did. Besides, I had parmesan to use up.

Everything remains absolutely bloody terrible, but otoh pasta meatballs make it a lot less edgy.