Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meals 2 was my very first cookbook. I was gifted this amazing cookbook in 2004 right after graduating from college. As I packed up all of belongings to move to Philadelphia, it was the very first thing I packed away carefully with my newly purchased kitchen knives, gadgets, and more. Obviously, I was very excited at this new independence and life that was to come and learning to cook and discover new foods was at the forefront of this excitement. Also, since cooking was so new to me, I had no idea what half of the recipes in her book were all about so it intimidated me.
In keeping my comfort levels high, I stuck to less than a handful of her recipes and kept repeated them and some others from magazines along the way. This recipe for Greek Meatballs in Wine Sauce was not one of those recipes, and I greatly regret it.
Sometime after I moved back home and the years had passed, I had eventually gotten rid of the cookbook as I have this obsession with constantly purging and replacing things. Now after 16 years, I found myself wandering my favorite thrift store and come across this once sacred cookbook, priced at $0.99. After flipping through it’s pages, not only was I filled with nostalgia but also with a new lens of wonder as now the recipes called to my attention.
My 16 years of cooking experience has expanded my horizons so far that these once exotic sounding recipes now sounded more familiar and were no longer intimidating. With new bookmarks, I am now ready to revisit this cookbook and make some new delicious meals.
Greek Meatballs in Wine Sauce
Ingredients
- 3/4 pound ground lamb
- 3/4 pound ground beef or ground veal
- 1 small yellow skinned onion, minced or grated with hand grater
- A handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 tablespoon (1 turn of the pan) extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 1/2 lemon
Prepare
- Firstly, preheat a medium skillet over medium high heat.
- Next, combine meats, onion, parsley, salt, and pepper. Add butter and oil to pan and begin rolling small, bite-size balls, adding balls to pan as you roll them. Cook balls 10 to 12 minutes, shaking pan occasionally to brown equally on all sides. Deglaze pan with wine and allow wine to reduce by half, 1 or 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and squeeze the juice of 1/2 lemon over the meatballs.
- Finally, garnish with additional parsley and serve in a bowl.
