Pork Meatball Banh Mi

After knocking out a bunch of (Belated) Chinese New Year meals two weeks ago, we seem to have detoured into meals that come from or are inspired by Southeast Asia.  Part of that is totally random but a lot of the ingredients that work for Chinese food work just as well for Southeast Asian.  And since I don't make it to Chinatown that often, every time I go down there I tend to buy a ton of Asian ingredients that I can't find anywhere on the UWS.  Then I have to figure out a use for all of the random ingredients, like the Thai basil that we used in these pork meatballs.  But don't worry, this weekend we went back to our (Belated) Chinese New Year meals for some homemade dumplings that require a bunch of time and effort to put together (hence my need to make them over the weekend).  I'll try to post about the dumplings tomorrow.


I have been thinking about making these banh mis for some time.  I love banh mi and I am a big fan of meatballs so this recipe represents a very a natural pairing for me.  But the recipe ended up at the bottom of my list of bookmarked recipes so I sat on it for a long time.  But I was trying to come up with a recipe to use some ground pork so here I am.  When I tried just a bite of the pork meatballs I wasn't blown away.  They were flavorful, but they felt a little heavy and dense.  But when I took a bite of the sandwich with the hot chili mayo, pickled carrots and daikon, cilantro and jalapenos it all came together.  You got heat from the hot chili mayo (which I loved and I never ever love mayo) and jalapenos, bright acidity and snappy texture from from the carrots and daikon and bright herbaceous-ness from the cilantro.  All of the components just worked beautifully together.  The only component that didn't work was the bread and that was our fault.  By the time I made it to Fairway on Wednesday night the only baguettes left were slightly doughy whole wheat baguettes.  I did my best, but they were kind of leaden and spongy (and tasted really blah).  If the baguette had been nice and fresh, with a crackly exterior and a really tender crumb I think the banh mi would have been really tasty.  Because it really was the bread here that killed it for me.  So if you want to make this recipe (and you should because the sandwich has serious potential), do yourself a favor and either get proper crusty banh mi bread, or pick up a nice baguette and go to town.

Recipe after the jump!

Mini Buffalo Chicken Balls with Blue Cheese Dip

 
I really love a good meatball so this recipe sounded really interesting to me.  Buffalo wings are awesome.  Meatballs are awesome.  Why wouldn't they be awesome together?  The problem with these meatballs is that they are lacking a key component to the buffalo wings - texture.  When you bite into a nice buffalo wing you have the crispy deep-fried skin with the moist chicken.  These meatballs have the right flavor.  And they are moist.  But they are one big ball of smush.  There was literally no texture to them.  I had hoped that the celery and the shallot would provide a little texture, but no such luck.  When I saw how wet and soft they were I decided to broil them for a few minutes at the end of the cooking process to try to get a crust to form on the exterior.  No dice.  The broiling did help to firm them up a little, but no crust formed because they were too wet.  The blue cheese dip was pretty chunky (which was a conscious decision on our part to provide texture).  I also ate my meatballs with celery sticks because I needed the crunch.  And I really enjoy the combination of buffalo wings, blue cheese and celery.  It works for me.  Alex took one bite of the celery and gave me the rest.  Sometimes it's not such a bad thing that Alex doesn't like celery.

Recipes after the jump!

Italian Wedding Soup

Ummmmmm....  What to say about this soup?  It was neither my favorite, not my least favorite soup that we have ever made.  I would say that it falls somewhere in the middle.  It was good, but not great (or at least not as great as I had hoped it might be).  The turkey meatballs smelled amazing while they were browning in the pan, but finishing them in the simmering broth seemed to remove a lot of their flavor rather than adding flavor.  And the broth didn't seem to absorb much flavor from the meatballs either.  The broth did pick up a little flavor from the escarole, but not much else.  I must admit that the soup really improved once you dipped some bread into it.  Then it was pretty tasty.  But all things considered, I wish that we had just made Stracciatella instead - a lot less messy and labor intensive, but just as tasty.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #7 - Lion's Head Meatballs

 

I'm not sure if I am happy or sad that this is our last Chinese New Year meal for 2012.  The funny thing is that I sat down in January and got really excited for our Chinese New Year meals and picked out a bunch of recipes.  I got so excited that I couldn't wait until Chinese New Year and picked some recipes to make as a warm up - Chicken with Ginger (La Jiang Men Ji), Red-Braised Pork (Hong Shao Rou) and Stir-Fried Mongolian Lamb with Scallions.  Somehow I managed to not make a single recipe that I had originally selected for Chinese New Year.  Instead, I went out and found a whole new set of recipes.  I did stick to some of the same categories - I wanted to make dumplings and noodles, I wanted to make seafood, I wanted to make tofu and I wanted to make meat.  Plus I wanted to throw in a few new sides so I did that too.  Alex and I are in total agreement with each other on our favorite meal.  Our favorite new side was definitely Daikon Slivers in a Spicy Dressing.  And our favorite entree was Ants Climbing a Tree.  

This recipe falls somewhere in the middle of our Chinese New Year meals.  The meatballs were incredibly moist and tender and had really good flavor.  Somehow the broth didn't have quite as much flavor as I had expected.  Therefore the cabbage didn't soak up quite as much flavor as I would have hoped, although the Taiwanese cabbage is inherently nice and sweet.  Although this dish wasn't as labor-intensive as the Pork and Napa Cabbage Water Dumplings (Shuijiao), it didn't exactly come together quickly and easily.  And while the meatballs were pretty good, I don't know that I would go to the trouble of making them again, especially as they didn't rank among my favorite Chinese New Year dishes.  Strangely enough, my favorite Chinese meal of late was the Red-Braised Pork (Hong Shao Rou) we made back in January.  It was amazing!

Recipe after the jump!

Chipotle Meatballs

Alex has proposed a challenge - one whole week of cooking where we are not allowed to use any recipes and have to come up with everything all on our own.  It's going to be a tough challenge, but I am game.  But it can't be this week because I have already planned out all of our meals for the week!  Whatever week we end up picking for our challenge, I will let you guys know in advance.  Or at least I will let you know which dishes are part of the challenge.  And it might end up taking more than a week - I think I am going to adapt the challenge a little to do seven meals that are uniquely ours, even if it takes two weeks. 

For this week we are still using recipes that I picked out from other websites, cookbooks, magazines, etc, like this one from Simply Recipes.  The reason I wanted to make this recipe (aside from the fact that it sounds delicious) is that it would use up the ground pork in the freezer and the remaining chipotles in adobo and crushed tomatoes that we used to make our Smoky Shrimp, Hominy and Tortilla Soup.  It also had the added benefit of using up our remaining scallions and a half of an onion we had in the fridge.  Sometimes things just work out and it's wonderful.  And everything worked out with this recipe - it used up random ingredients in the fridge and it was really tasty.  We served it over brown rice and I thought it was delicious.  We were both a little worried that the flavor of the chipotles would completely overwhelm the flavor of the meatballs themselves but between the bacon and the ground pork the meatballs were porky enough to stand up to the spicy, smoky flavor of the chipotles.  Considering that they were only briefly simmered/tossed in the sauce, they soaked up a surprising amount of flavor while retaining their integrity.  I thought served over brown rice they were a fun variation on your typical Italian-American spaghetti and meatballs.  And who doesn't love a good spaghetti and meatballs?

Recipe after the jump!