an ever bet­ter meatball

But before I get to the recipe, can I just say that I love cook­books. Well, not so much what you’d define as strict cook­books. What I grav­i­tate to is a sto­ry: the sto­ry of a life, punc­tu­at­ed with food. I tend to like to WRITE the sort of thing I like to READ. So it’s no acci­dent either that I’m work­ing so jol­ly hard on set­ting down MY sto­ries and recipes, nor that I spend the rest of my time read­ing oth­er peo­ple’s. And then of course there’s the added lay­er of cook­ing their recipes, to vary­ing degrees of success.

Late­ly, though, my writ­ing project has become a blurred con­fu­sion to me. I can no longer decide if any of my chap­ters are worth­while, if any of them make sense, much less achieve that nir­vana-like state called “flow.” In all my pre­vi­ous writ­ing life — school­work, dis­ser­ta­tion, art reviews and the like — flow was nev­er any­thing I thought about. The writ­ing just DID. Flow. I was the sort of writer who irri­tat­ed oth­er writ­ers, because in gen­er­al the first draft was just fine, so I devel­oped a lazy strat­e­gy in which the first draft was the last draft.

Not any­more.

I have diag­nosed my trou­ble as being a case of car­ing too much. Always before, my writ­ing projects were intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits, and most­ly a means to an end. But now each mem­o­ry, each anec­dote, each chap­ter takes me back to a cher­ished part of my life, with trea­sured peo­ple and irre­place­able con­text. It all mat­ters too much! So I’m becom­ing labored and tor­ment­ed and un-nat­ur­al. No flow.

The solu­tion, every­one tells me, is to find a struc­ture for the book and then let the var­i­ous ideas I have for fill­ing it find their prop­er slot in the struc­ture. Like hav­ing rules to a game so the play­ers don’t just floun­der around run­ning into each oth­er. When I wrote my dis­ser­ta­tion, my advi­sor gave me a piece of invalu­able advice: imag­ine your whole book as a chess­board. Each one of your ideas will play a role, and you sim­ply assign them to their place on the board, then flesh them out. I had no dif­fi­cul­ty in doing that, for the pur­pos­es of a fem­i­nist analy­sis of late 19th-cen­tu­ry sculp­ture in France. Some­how, doing the same thing for meat­balls, mac­a­roni and cheese and vichys­soise is prov­ing much trick­i­er and fraught with dan­ger and confusion.

Let’s see: the choic­es for struc­ture are these. I could orga­nize it chrono­log­i­cal­ly as I lived my life, start­ing with child­hood mem­o­ries and food, run­ning right to the present. Or I could orga­nize it sea­son­al­ly, pick­ing out sea­son­al events and mem­o­ries and set­ting them in order. Or it could be arranged by types of food (this sounds the least appeal­ing to me, since the book isn’t pri­mar­i­ly about food). I’m sure there are oth­er orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples that haven’t occurred to me.

So I’m in a bit of a block.

Read­ing every­one else’s high­ly accom­plished work helps on one lev­el, in that it gives me some­thing to strive for, a stan­dard to meet. But the flip side of that is that I look at my own work and find it want­i­ng. And of course no book reads exact­ly like anoth­er, and mine needs to find exact­ly its own voice and struc­ture too. Sigh, dou­ble sigh.

How about some­thing prac­ti­cal? Let me tell you what NOT to do with your crab tart should you decide to make it. The mis­take I made yes­ter­day would have flat­tened my con­fi­dence sev­er­al months ago, but hav­ing racked up some hours in the bak­ing depart­ment, I felt that sure­ly I had made just one error, not even a dis­as­trous one, and the key was to find it, and not to do it again. I’ll explain.

Bak­ing is a sci­en­tif­ic process, as you know (I am in con­stant denial of this fact, to my per­il). I can’t just add a lit­tle of this, a lit­tle of that and expect it to work, as I do with soup, or pas­ta sauce, or meat­balls. I also can­not ignore the process itself, the rules and sequences of activ­i­ty. Well, need­less to say, I did. Yes­ter­day, for my beloved Lost Prop­er­ty group from Avery’s school.

Lost Prop­er­ty. There is some­thing amus­ing about the name, when you first hear it, and when some­one first approach­es you at a school tea wear­ing a badge that says, “Mol­ly, Lost Prop­er­ty,” your first reac­tion is bemuse­ment. The des­ig­na­tion sounds like a pathet­ic label worn by a child on a rail­way plat­form dur­ing World War II in East­bourne. In truth, it’s the sin­gle coolest vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ty at the school, in a sort of chick­en-and-egg sort of way. Was Lost Prop­er­ty cool, and so cool peo­ple joined, or were the very first LPs extra­or­di­nary to begin with? We are well known for host­ing an epic lun­cheon of majes­tic pro­por­tions at the start of every term, each term host­ed by a dif­fer­ent vol­un­teer moth­er (me, yes­ter­day), and attract­ing pos­i­tive­ly Lucul­lan con­tri­bu­tions in every course. I may say indis­creet­ly that the wine is con­tributed by a Mas­ter of Wine (not many are women, appar­ent­ly), who burst into the meet­ing say­ing, “Have you a radio? Some­one turn it on to Radio 4, I’m speak­ing.” The main cours­es were mon­u­ments of ele­gance, the sal­ads lus­cious, the cheese board ridicu­lous­ly magnificent.

I was more than hap­py to enlist John’s help in bring­ing up a ban­quet table from the base­ment, bor­row chairs from my Lost Prop­er­ty friends up the street, make my friend Annie dri­ve me all over West Lon­don search­ing for crab­meat for my dar­ling tart. Then the vin­tage linen table­cloth, the many mis­match­ing din­ner plates, sal­ad plates, EVERY sil­ver fork and knife pol­ished by me the day before… I drew the line at cloth nap­kins, how­ev­er. For 30? Not in the mood.

But the tart. I was putting it togeth­er the night before the lunch, while also grilling salmon, fin­ish­ing cream of mush­room soup from home­made stock, steam­ing rice and sautee­ing broc­coli for din­ner. And some­where in the mid­dle of all this, accom­pa­nied by Avery’s singing “The Bare Neces­si­ties” and play­ing “Fur Elise” end­less­ly on the piano, I decid­ed it would be best to bake the tart halfway, refrig­er­ate it overnight, and fin­ish bak­ing it the next day just before the luncheon.

Well, I can tell you that this strat­e­gy is a dis­as­ter. There is some chem­i­cal reac­tion in the cook­ing process with things involv­ing eggs (I think) that means you CAN­NOT stop the process halfway through, a quar­ter of the way through, any POR­TION of the way through, and hope for suc­cess. How did I find this out? Because when I took the tart from the oven at serv­ing time, some­where about halfway through the cham­pagne, I could see that the fill­ing had not set. Not near­ly enough. I put it back in the oven, turned the heat up slight­ly. Guess what hap­pened then? Any extra but­ter or cream or BOTH from the fill­ing slipped qui­et­ly out of the spring­form pan and onto the bot­tom of the oven floor and while it did­n’t actu­al­ly catch on FIRE, it pro­duced a nox­ious smoke that bil­lowed into the kitchen when I opened the oven door. Shades of my par­ents’ first Thanks­giv­ing when their turkey fat explod­ed on THEIR oven floor.

I man­aged to ask some­one qui­et­ly to open the gar­den door, some­one else to open the front door, turned up the exhaust fan as high as it would go, and exe­cut­ed a sleight of hand manoeu­ver to lib­er­ate the tart from the oven and SHUT the door as quick­ly as I could. No harm done.

And I have to say that the tart was eat­en, every last slight­ly gooey morsel, instant­ly. Sev­er­al ladies com­plained that they did not get sec­ond help­ings. But I learned my les­son. Cook it all at once. That’s all you need to know.

Tonight I redeemed myself some­what. Hav­ing felt unin­spired for cook­ing din­ner, I jumped in with both feet and decid­ed to make Moroc­can meat­balls. Always a good idea, and tonight it turned out to be an even bet­ter idea than ever before, in a most unex­pect­ed way, I might add. I have always had a warm place in my heart for the “kef­ta,” the Lebanese lamb mix­ture I obtain at Green Val­ley in Edg­ware Road, for the meat­balls. I have nour­ished a roman­tic attach­ment for the mys­te­ri­ous and unnamed ingre­di­ents in this meat mix­ture, an ambrosial elixir of gen­tly spiced and exot­ic deliciousness.

Tonight, how­ev­er, John did the shop­ping, and not at Green Val­ley. “Just buy lamb,” I advised, “and pars­ley and gar­lic.” So at home I chopped flat-leaf pars­ley super-fine and minced gar­lic and squished in ras el hanout, that irre­place­able aro­mat­ic spice blend from Moroc­co, mixed it all with the lamb, knead­ed it like bread dough and formed meat­balls, which I dropped into the sim­mer­ing toma­to sauce to poach. And do you know what?

FAR BET­TER than the mix from the Lebanese mar­ket! So fear not, any more, my friends who do not have access to a for­eign mar­ket. Mix your own. Just gor­geous. With eggs poached at the last minute into the top of the bub­bling, gar­licky sauce, there is noth­ing nicer on a cold, windy, rainy Jan­u­ary Lon­don night.

It turns out: after all this think­ing about my writ­ing, with this expe­ri­ence I pro­duced a sec­ond draft of my meat­balls and it was an improve­ment. A les­son learned. Enjoy.

Lamb Kef­ta Meat­balls with Toma­to Sauce and Poached Eggs
(serve about 6)

1 kilo lamb mince, mixed with 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf pars­ley, 4 cloves minced gar­lic and 1 tbsp Moroc­can ras el hanout spice, rolled into lit­tle 1‑inch meatballs
1/2 cup veg­etable oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, fine­ly minced
2 large cans peeled plum tomatoes
1 tbsp ras el hanout
1 1/2 tbsps ground cumin
1 tbsp lemon-gin­ger powder
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp salt
fresh ground pep­per to taste
5 extra tbsps fresh chopped flat-leaf parsley

In a very large, heavy-bot­tomed deep saucepan, saute the gar­lic and onion in the oil and add the toma­toes, break­ing them up with your hands as you put them in. In my hum­ble opin­ion, there is no place in this life for tinned chopped toma­toes. Don’t you won­der what sort of toma­toes they use when they know they can get away with them not look­ing like a toma­to? Just buy whole and break them up dur­ing the cook­ing process, I say. Add the spices and the parsley.

This sauce must sim­mer for at least two hours, but it can sit almost indefinitely.

About an hour before you want to serve the dish, drop the meat­balls into the sauce, in one even lay­er, as many as you can fit (we end­ed up with 30 meat­balls and they all fit). Then cov­er the pan and leave to sim­mer for 20 min­utes. Again, these can sit almost indef­i­nite­ly with no risk of becom­ing tough.

When the meat­balls are thor­ough­ly cooked and you are about 10 min­utes away from serv­ing, break eggs, one at a time, and low­er into the sauce, as many as you can fit (we man­aged about 4). Cov­er and cook until the eggs are poached, about 8 min­utes. Throw the remain­ing pars­ley on top. Resist the temp­ta­tion to play with the eggs until they are cooked through! A bite of egg yolk and a bite of meat­ball smoth­ered in the sauce was… divine.

This dish smells like noth­ing in this world. Your guests will feel they have died and gone to heav­en, and you will be a star. I served this with steamed pota­toes driz­zled with olive oil and sprin­kled with pars­ley, and a sal­ad made of cucum­bers and dill in sour cream.