Those Are Some Spicy Meatballs

Growing up a few blocks from U.S. 301 in the 1950s and 1960s, Snowbird season, referring to the Northerners heading south for the winter, was a season just like summer, fall and spring. (Winter hardly exists that far south in Georgia.) Not to sound too much like a bad Andy Griffith Show imitation, but part of the fun of Snowbird season was the cars – Thunderbirds and big-finned Cadillacs and pastel convertibles. My favorite part, though, was really good Italian food.

That statement obviously requires some explanation. When my father, although somewhat formal and a bit of an introvert like me, made friends, he made them for life. So when he married my mother and moved South after World War II, he kept up with his Army buddies, mostly New Yorkers of Italian descent. Whenever they headed to Florida, they always stopped for a visit. After a meal or two of fried chicken and other Southern delicacies provided by my family, the wives often offered to cook up some Italian specialties. The very best were the meatballs prepared by the Brunis, an older couple whom we called Uncle Charlie and Aunt Rose.

It was all great entertainment for a little girl. There was the trip to the local Winn Dixie in search of key ingredients, or reasonable replacements if we couldn’t find them. Then, back home to chop the peppers and onions into miniscule bits. When everything came together, the aroma of the sauce was so mesmerizing, I didn’t want to leave the kitchen and would read at the dinette table until time for supper. Then, we all sat down to eat and listen to Daddy and Uncle Charlie (or one of the other visitors) tell Army stories.

Of course, we weren’t exactly in the desert the rest of the year, when it came to authentic Italian food. Many of my family’s friends were Catholics, always Italian if they weren’t Irish in south Georgia, and we also enjoyed sumptuous meals from cooks like Mrs. Pucciano

While these friends certainly avoided pork products when they were cooking for my family, I’m equally sure the mixture of ingredients wasn’t exactly kosher either. So even if it is possible to make a completely passable Sunday gravy (as some Italian Americans refer to a homemade tomato sauce), it always has been difficult to duplicate the flavor of those tender, moist and delectable meatballs.

A few days ago, more than four decades after those memorable Snowbird meals, I finally found a way to get close to the correct flavor. The recipe doesn’t exactly fit into the category of “clean food,” a term which refers to a small number of fresh ingredients not sanitation. But, it’s great for an occasional treat and can easily slip into a Weight Watchers diet.

The recipe uses one of my favorite secret ingredients: Toastettes Gourmet Round Croutons (Parmesan Cheese & Garlic Flavor). As counterintuitive as it may seem, the croutons are kosher pareve, nondairy, and can be used to impart a cheese flavor without rendering a meat dish nonkosher.

The recipe below is for the meatballs only. Use any sauce you want. I often doctor up Trader Joe’s organic marinara, which is low in both calories and sodium.

Mix one pound of ground veal with 100 finely crushed Toastettes (four servings on the package box.) Add a teaspoon of garlic, a half teaspoon of red pepper and a beaten egg. Mix together well and divide into 10 large or 15 small meatballs. (If you want more of a sausage taste, also add a half teaspoon of fennel seeds.)

Brown the meatballs in a just enough olive oil to keep them from sticking. When they are brown on all sides, steam the meatballs in the marinara sauce until cooked through.

I serve the meatballs and sauce on Dreamfields brand pasta, which is high in fiber and much tastier than most of the whole wheat pasta products.

Honestly, while these meatballs are very good, they are missing some key ingredients from the specialties of my youth. And I’m not talking about real parmesan cheese.

The homemade Italian food we ate in south Georgia always tasted of friendship and my father’s special visitors from far away. It should come as no surprise that, whenever I eat Italian food now, I always think of my Dad.

When I was a senior in college and had been accepted at Columbia University for journalism school, my father offered to fly with me to New York City as I looked at housing options. It was April of 1976, and New York City was bogged down in a devastating fiscal crisis. The city was probably at its dirtiest and scariest and, frankly, I was glad to have my father with me as I explored the fringes of Spanish Harlem.

In some ways, the visit was disappointing. I learned from university officials that I would not be able to work while attending the graduate program in journalism. I did not want to ask my parents for money to support me, even though my father offered to pay, excited about the prospect of my attending Columbia. As the youngest child, my parents were already in their 50s and I knew they needed to start saving for their own retirement. I was proud that scholarships had paid most of my tuition during my last two years in college. That issue became a deal breaker with Columbia, and I ended up going to the University of Michigan for graduate school.

Of course, we didn’t know any of that then. So, that night, after visiting the university, Daddy took me to Mamma Leone’s at West 48th Street off Eighth Avenue to celebrate. (The restaurant ultimately became a notorious tourist trap and moved to the theater district. I don’t know if it still exists now.) My father and I had a great time. We had a meal from soup to nuts, or, in this case, from minestrone to spumoni. Like most 21-year-olds, I could eat my weight in food, and we left nothing for the doggy bags.

The next day, we went to a Times Square movie theater to see All The President’s Men, which had just opened. For some reason, we had been unable to get tickets to a Broadway show. We then rode the subway to Battery Park and explored that area, including a stop to look inside the World Trade Center and ride the elevators.(In some ways, it was good that my father had been gone four years when the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001.)

Without doubt, that was my favorite meal ever in an Italian restaurant. Touring my father’s hometown with him was an incredible experience as a young adult, much different and much more fun than our trips to the city when I was a small child.

I remember what my father said at Mama Leones and repeated many other times when we ate out together. “If you leave here hungry, it’s your own fault,” he said as he gaped at the massive platters of food.

Often, I think Daddy, who was married for more than 50 years to his soul mate and had many, many friends for life, was talking about more than a restaurant meal.

Bottom of Form