ArcaMax

Thanksgiving in Paris

My most interesting Thanksgiving was one I spent in Paris. As you can probably guess, the French don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. They didn’t have any Pilgrims landing on their shores.

My husband and I checked into our hotel in the middle of Paris. We got in the elevator to ride upstairs and saw a little notice offering us a Thanksgiving meal if we wanted to dine in their restaurant. At first I was extremely excited. I thought, “Wow, I get to eat Thanksgiving dinner!” Then I read the menu and my heart sank. All I could think was “YUK.”

The problem was the French tried to accommodate everyone from every region of the US when they planned their menu. They had a pineapple cake from Hawaii. Oyster stuffing from New England. They had sweet potato pie from the south. Sausages from the west…you get the idea. The menu was all over the place! I am really good at visualizing and tasting a menu in my head, and I could see this was going to be such a cacophony of flavors, none of it was going to taste right when you put them together on one plate.

So we aborted the idea of eating at the hotel restaurant and went out. We found a really beautiful spot, and had a wonderful meal. I had lamb for Thanksgiving. My husband had fish. We had a joyous time.

Surprisingly enough, my husband’s meal was closer to what the pilgrims actually ate at the first Thanksgiving than the meal offered at our hotel. In fact, most of our “traditional” Thanksgiving dishes were not eaten at the very first Thanksgiving.

Here’s an article by Cristina Duke about what the Pilgrims actually ate on Thanksgiving Day:
www.dvo.com/newsletter/monthly/2014/november/tabletalk4.html

You might be surprised.

For today’s recipe I’m giving you one of those things that you might serve to company over Thanksgiving weekend. Not everyone wants turkey every day, so here is a recipe for super-easy, authentic meatballs that are a BIG YUM once everyone’s turkeyed out.

Authentic Italian Meatballs

This is a ZReboot recipe. These meatballs are my take on an authentic meatballs recipe from the Italian section of New York City. These actually have a cheesy element to them that make them super yummy. BIG YUM!

When I am in a hurry I can make these and then serve them with a jar marinara sauce. You CAN find marinara in the grocery store that has no sugar in it. It might take some label reading but you’ll find one.

And if I’m feeling super-fancy I might make a little pasta. For me, a full serving of pasta now is about 1/3 cup cooked. I put it in the bottom of the bowl. I eat the meat and sauce on top and hardly notice I have very few noodles.

Servings: One serving is 4 meatballs.

Ingredients:

1 pound of high quality ground beef. I use 94% lean but you can use any grade
½ cup of breadcrumbs
½ cup of minced onion (you choose your favorite. I use Vidalia)
½ cup of whipping cream or whole milk
4 – 7 tsp of minced garlic (Jar garlic will work but fresh will taste even better! You decide how much)
Grated sea salt and pepper
1 egg
1 Tbl of Italian seasoning blend

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Line a big cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Spray it with olive oil.

Take all of the ingredients and put them in a big bowl. Get in there with your hands and really mix it all up. The hardest thing to do is get the cheese mixed in. In my case, I left little blobs of cheese in places and that didn’t hurt the results at all. I loved the little cheese bits. You don’t want to handle the meat any more than necessary so do your best to go fast. The Italians feel handling the meat too much makes tough meatballs. I used a little ¼ cup measure to scoop my meat and formed my meatballs with my hands.

Place the meatballs on a cookie sheet so they don’t touch each other. Bake at 400 degrees for 12 to 20 minutes depending on how big the meatballs are and how brown you’d like them to be. I like mine to almost have a crunch to the outside so I keep them in there to the 20 minute limit. Just keep an eye on them. I also use my convection setting. That makes them crunch up on the outside too.

Cheers,
Enjoy!
Zola