Now that’s a spicy meatball

At the latest edition of Choice Cuts, we paid tribute to the movie Tilsammans with husmanskost, classic Swedish comfort food.

Ganda lent some excellent recipes and her expertise. Check out, for example, her meatball-rolling abilities.

I’m a big fan of meatballs and have eaten innumerable iterations of them — in Sweden too — and made a few mostly Italian versions, but these are truly magical.

The recipe comes from Ganda’s copy of Leif Mannerström’s The Art of Home Cooking and it calls for equal amounts of ground beef and pork to be mixed with breadcrumbs soaked in milk and beaten eggs, two onions, one grated raw, the other chopped fine and browned, mashed potatoes, veal stock, soy sauce, and anchovy extract (I used whole fish, preserved in oil, and threw them in with the onion when it was nearly done to break them down).

Mannerström suggests piping the mixture into balls, but we found it easier just to roll them by hand. The meatballs are browned in butter (best done in the cast-iron skillet or nonstick, I unfortunately discovered), and for gravy, you just deglaze the pan with some water.

They’re totally worth it.