Best Celery Polpette Recipes
POLPETTINE - ITALIAN HOUSEWIFE'S MEATBALLS
Zia Tea, my Italian aunt, used to make meat balls when she had left over meat which did mot make another meal for the family. She stuffed it in her meat grinder, ground it and then added raw ground meat. She was not wealthy in terms of money, so she had plenty of fruit, veggies and herbs from her wildly growing garden, but could not afford to buy lots of meat and especially no costly cuts of meat. My mother, studying in Rome during the late 1950s and early 1960s, used to spend her holidays with zia Tea, whose husband worked as a fisher, and they were quite poor but shared everything they had with my mother. The meat they occasionally had was cheap horses' meat and the fish mostly salted codd which lay around in the kitchen cupboard. When I was a child, zia Tea and her husband run a pet store and had some more money, but not much. No more horse meat and salted codd, but some inexpensive beef or pork cuts, thinly sliced turkey or sometimes one of the rabbits from the pet store. Stocking up the left over meat which she ground for polpettine, she used whatever was on sale at the local butcher's, so it was never exactly the same polpettine. But they were the best I ever had in my life! You can use every kind of ground meat you like and adapt the amount of garlic to your taste. She didn't use a lot so that the lemony flavor and the sage and celery were not overwhelmed.
Provided by Mia in Germany
Categories Meat
Time 40m
Yield 6 , 6 serving(s)
Number Of Ingredients 12
Steps:
- Chop garlic, celery leaves and potato.
- In a mixing bowl combine ground meat, bread crumbs, grated lemon peel, salt, chopped garlic, sage and celery leaves, potato, two tablespoons olive oil and the egg.
- Knead like bread dough and slowly add some milk to make a soft dough.
- The meat dough should be smooth and homogenous.
- Shape into 2 inch meatballs, flatten to about 1 1/2 inch thickness and fry in olive oil until golden brown.
- My aunt served them with a salad of cooked green beans and potatoes, seasoned with nothing but salt, pepper and savory and drizzled with olive oil.
POLPETTE NAPOLETANE
Steps:
- Put the bread in a small mixing bowl, cover with milk, and leave to soak.
- Chop the parsley and garlic together. Put meat into a large mixing bowl. Squeeze the milk out of the bread and add to meat. Add parsley and garlic. Use your hands to mix the ingredients. Break eggs into the mixture to bind it. Keep mixing. Add the pecorino. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Shape meatballs by hand, make a hole in the top and insert a small piece of mozzarella. Cover it up and pat meatball into shape. Roll them in bread crumbs. Pour olive oil into a frying pan and when it's really hot, fry the meatballs for 5 minutes, or until they have formed a crust. Then turn over. When golden brown and crusty on both sides remove the meatballs from the pan and drain on paper towels.
- Add the meatballs to the tomato sauce, cover and cook very slowly on low heat for 45 minutes, until the sauce is reduced by half.
- Pour enough oil into a saucepan to cover the surface. Add garlic and 3 tins of tomatoes, mashing them slightly. Boil the sauce for 5 minutes and simmer for another 3 minutes.
- Cooking Time: 8 minutes
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