Five perfectly marvelous MEATBALLS
Meatballs are on a roll.
Those rotund orbs of deliciousness have always been popular menu items, but now they’re taking over entire restaurants. Case in point: San Francisco’s Meatball Bar, opened by the Peninsula’s Doppio Zero team this spring, and Morgan Hill’s expanding House of Meatballs. Trendy they may be, but whether it’s kofte, keftedes or kalbi, meatballs are delicious no matter what their provenance or preparation. They’re pure comfort fare — and they’re beloved by home cooks and chefs everywhere, from Berkeley’s Comal to San Francisco’s SPQR.
The memory of her grandmother’s cevapcici is likely what fueled Paula Wolfert’s “unrelenting obsession” with meatballs, says Emily Thelin, author of “Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life” (M&P, $35), the new biographical cookbook about the Sonoma-based food scholar and cookbook author, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2013.
Wolfert researched and published dozens of recipes for kibbe and kofta during her long career. But while working on “Unforgettable” with Wolfert, Thelin and editor Andrea Nguyen were particularly charmed by cevapcici, the Balkan meatballs from Wolfert’s youth. Shaped more like stubby cigars than classic meatballs, cevapcici cook more easily and evenly on a grill. Wolfert’s version is laced with a winning combination of garlic and hot smoked paprika.
Alex Hult’s decision to add Swedish meatballs to the menu at his eponymous Los Gatos restaurant has a childhood connection, as well. The Swedish chef and his staff were brainstorming comfort food recipes a couple of autumns ago, when someone suggested Hult’s mother’s meatballs.
“Every Wednesday night was meatball night,” Hult says. “Me and my brother used to compete to see who could eat the most.”
In Sweden, meatballs — or köttbullar — are often made with beef and pork, and sometimes even elk. “If you can get elk meatballs, those are the bomb,” Hult says. His all-beef version is served with creamy mushroom gravy over mashed potatoes, with a traditional spoonful of lingonberry jam.
While some meatballs hew tightly to tradition, others grow out of cross-cultural pollination — such as Comal’s albondigas, which Travel+Leisure named some of the country’s best meatballs a few years back. Chef Matt Gandin says when he created this recipe, he used his experiences making Italian polpette at San Francisco’s Delfina. Comal’s albondigas include ricotta along with beef, pork and a splash of the adobo sauce that accompany the albondigas, which is also a twist on tradition. Albondigas are typically served in soup.
“It may not be how someone from Guadalajara serves albondigas,” Gandin says. “But serving meat in a chile-vinegar sauce is something they’d be familiar with, so it’s just kind of combining the two methods. It works really well together.”
Adherence to strict tradition isn’t necessary as long as the results are good, says chef Deuki Hong, who coauthored last year’s “Koreatown: A Cookbook” (Crown Publishing, $30). The former Manhattanite — he earned acclaim at the Korean barbecue hot spot, Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong — lives in San Francisco now, where you’ll find his Korean fried chicken pop-up, Sunday Bird, at The Boba Guys on Fillmore.
Hong tapped chef friend Daniel Holzman, owner of Brooklyn’s wildly successful The Meatball Shop, to create a Korean-inspired meatball. The result was kalbi combined with soy sauce, Asian pear, and sesame oil — the essential flavors of bulgogi.
“The beautiful thing about this recipe (is) you can take that meatball and apply it to a very Italian presentation and put it over spaghetti,” says Hong. “But you can (also) apply it to a very Korean application, which is the lettuce wrap and rice. It works both ways.”
Lest vegetarians feel left out, chef Matt Accarrino, executive chef at San Francisco’s SPQR, makes a “meatball” from breadcrumbs and quinoa, braised in tomato sauce along with Tuscan kale. Add heartiness by serving it over quinoa pilaf with roasted baby potatoes.
Of course, there are great meatballs and there are meh-balls. Elevate yours by using plenty of seasoning and flavor, and keep a close eye on texture. Dense meatballs are a downer, but so are those that crumble.
There are some secrets to ensuring a meatball that holds together without being heavy. No matter what ingredients you use, handle them as little as possible, says Gandin. Don’t over mix and use a very light touch when rolling the balls by hand. He uses an ice cream scoop to make his albondigas.
And everyone has secret ingredients that lighten the texture — such as the ricotta in Gandin’s albondigas. Wolfert’s cevapcici rely on the surprising addition of club soda, which Thelin says is more common in recipes in central Europe.
“It’s really cool how the meat absorbs it,” she says. “It gets them a little more tender and I think it opens them up to the spices.”
Meatballs share many common ingredients, so with a little planning and prep work, it’s easy to make several kinds all at once. Gather family or friends to help mix and shape, and your cooking party can end with an — ahem — wellrounded meatball buffet.