Cocktail meatball secrets
Many of us have labored far too long to make that one dish sure to prompt lavish praise from our holiday guests. I remember painstakingly rubbing the skins off roasted hazelnuts for the filling in a buche de noel that also featured hand-crafted meringue mushrooms.
This is not one of those times. This column is about a guilty pleasure that requires little more than the ability to open jars. See the couple of recipes accompanying this column? You hardly need them.
This is not about farm-to-table or arcane culinary techniques. This is that appetizer your mom, aunt or neighbor served back in the day. And while my foodie friends might be mortified, I truly love these meatballs. (The cocktail wienies? Not so much).
“These meatballs are the easiest appetizer ever,” says Carol Query. “You can spend hours cutting, chopping, rolling and making fancy bites to serve, but this is the dish people will crowd around and devour.”
When Kammy Rose couldn’t quite remember the ingredients in these party meatballs, many Home Plates readers spoke up. Thanks to Query for writing a recipe Rose can hang on to. Most Plates readers don’t bother with a formal recipe, and no wonder. It’s basically a bottle of chili sauce combined with a jar of grape jelly. Frozen meatballs or cocktail wieners are simmered in the sauce, then served at parties from a slow cooker or chafing dish.
Steph Zervas of Millbrae says bottled barbecue sauce plus grape jelly makes an easy sauce
as well. San Jose resident Betty Mitchell makes a version with yellow mustard and grape jelly. And Hayward resident Kathy Chambers-Lowenstein combines black or redcurrant jelly with chili sauce.
“I get requests all the time, when I offer to bring an appetizer to an event,” she says.
Marcie Brown’s grandmother made the “tangysweet sauce” with a can of whole-cranberry sauce and a bottle of chili sauce. “Easy and delicious,” Brown says, “and probably very bad for us in the salt, sugar and calorie count.”
Kathi Curry fell into the currant jelly camp, pepping up her sauce with 1½ teaspoons of prepared mustard and a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice.
And Janice Hoctor likes the Sandra Lee version she spotted on the Food Network. This recipe uses Catalina salad dressing and orange marmalade.
Second helpings
Debra Greenway of Castro Valley spotted powdered orange peel for $1.99 in the clear-envelope spice section of Pleasanton’s Cost Plus World Market. “I bought it to use in an old Sunset holiday orange-cranberry scone recipe,” she says. “I make them so often, sometimes I don’t have an orange around for zest. So we’ll see how this product works.” Let us know, Debra.
Request line
Nancy Olea has misplaced her family’s favorite fruitcake recipe, or as she calls it, “fruitcake for fruitcake foes.” She clipped the recipe, contributed by Marge Reid of San Jose, from a Dec. 1, 2008, Home Plates column, but our archives don’t stretch back that far. Olea hopes another reader still has the recipe.
“I often see beautiful photos of roasted vegetables: squash, carrots, turnips, etc. And they all look tempting and crunchy,” says a reader named Geralynn. “I follow the recipe, toss them in olive oil, cook as directed, but mine always turn out oily, soggy and limp. Any suggestions on how to get my ovenroasted vegetables to look yummy and have some texture?”
I’m with Geralynn. I like the idea of roasting veggies, but my execution doesn’t always deliver satisfaction. Recently, I tried one of those popular sheet-pan dinner recipes. The roasted chicken thighs, Brussels sprouts, onions and sweet potatoes were a bit greasy for me.