¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And I'm Mark Scarborough. And together with Bruce, we have written over three dozen cookbooks. This is our podcast about food and cooking, our passions in life. In this episode of the podcast, we've got a one minute cooking tip about, of all things, white chocolate. We're going to be making. Meatballs during this episode. And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week. So let's get started.
¶ Our one-minute cooking tip: Try roasting white chocolate for a deeper, more caramelized flavor.
Our one minute cooking tip. Want to be a pastry chef in your own home? Try roasting white chocolate. What, what, what is roasted white chocolate? When you melt it in the oven on a sheet pan, it caramelizes. It takes about 40 minutes and the sugars caramelize and it comes out a deep. It's almost like making dulce de leche out of sweetened condensed milk. Okay, so just back up. So what do you do? Take your white chocolate, whether it's 6 ounces, 8 ounces, 12 ounces, 2 pounds, whatever it is.
Chop it up, put it on a baking tray.
A lipped baking tray. Sure. And you know No, not sure. No, not sure.
Okay, a lipped baking tray. And you're going to place it in an oven at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. And you're going to stir it around every 5 or 10 minutes. It'll take about 40 minutes until it's all golden and caramelized. Then what I like to do is scrape it onto a piece of paper. parchment, spread it out and let it cool. Then you could break it up and eat it. You could melt it again and use it for desserts that call for melted chocolate. You can pipe it onto things.
You could dip strawberries into it. You can make ganache out of it. It's a real. big pastry chef. Can you then, uh, cool it and break it up and store it in your pantry? You can, you can even mix nuts into that and make a caramelized white chocolate bark, which I think sounds really good. Okay,
well there you are, um, roasting white chocolate. Before we get on to making meatballs in this podcast, let me say that we do have a newsletter. It comes out, I don't know, maybe twice a month, maybe once a month, twice a month, something like that. You can sign up for that newsletter on our website. BruceAndMark. com or CookingWithBruceAndMark. com. You can then get our newsletter, which is unrelated mostly to this podcast. And I should also say, if you go out to our website, BruceAndMark.
com or CookingWithBruceAndMark. com, we started putting up recipes. And we're currently on a jag of chocolate chip or chocolate cookies on Twitter. tiktok videos and those recipes are going up even as we speak. Check that out and find out free recipe content on our website. So up next, we're going to make meatballs.
¶ We're making meatballs! Here's the recipe:
Meatballs are like chicken soup. Every cook makes their own version. Everyone grows up thinking that the way their mother or grandmother made them is the only way they should be
eaten. So, I have to make a confession. And, um, if you don't know, if you haven't listened to this podcast enough, you don't know that I have an aversion to, uh, well, what we called loose meat growing up, but that is ground beef. Or, quote unquote, ground beef. hamburger. And if you know me, I eat hamburgers, but I eat them blood rare. And mostly I don't like ground beef. I know it's this thing. And I really don't like meatloaf. And I
don't get it. I don't understand that meatloaf aversion. I could tell you something. Mark is going to go visit his mother in a week and I'm going to be alone for four days. I plan on making meatloaf. Oh, good. You
eat it all up. But here's the thing about, uh, and, uh, don't even get me started on hamburger casseroles. Oh, no, but that is loose meat. That's
disgusting.
Oh, God. Oh, I grew up on that stuff. Um, anyway, uh, I don't really like it, but here's the thing. I like meatballs. And it's a really weird thing because mostly I don't really care for ground beef. But, uh, But I love meatballs and I think it has to do with the browning. So we'll get
to that. But what I have here is beef and sausage. Now, we're going to start already. People are going to say, no, meatballs have to have veal or beef. They could be only beef or only beef and pork. In our house, it's a combination of lean meat. Ground beef and fatty Italian sweet sausage. And how much? I have a
pound of each. Okay, so a pound of each. And also, we should say that we prefer, and this is a big controversy in the food world, but we have fresh sausages. breadcrumbs here. So here's what happens. Let me tell you way too much about our lives as I'm staring at these breadcrumbs. Uh, the, our dog gets acid reflux. I know this is ridiculous to tell you, but okay, here it is. Our colleague gets acid reflux.
And so in order to stop that from happening every night before bed, he gets half a piece of breadcrumbs. toast. Um, just literally white whipped sandwich bread toast. He gets half a piece and that helps calm it all down. But we end up with a lot of crusts from all this white bread. So we always have tons of crusts in the freezer that Bruce can then grind up into fresh, not dried breadcrumbs. Yes, our dog likes us to cut the crusts off his bread. Don't, please don't write us about that.
So we have a half a cup of fresh breadcrumbs. And by the way, you can look for fresh breadcrumbs at most supermarkets at this point. And we've got them in a quarter cup of milk. It doesn't matter what kind of milk, whether it's low fat, skim, or full fat, or all fat. Oat or almond. Just no
sweetened, gross. And it's been sitting 20 minutes. So that's nice and soft. Now. A lot of people I know were taught that you lift the bread out and you gently squeeze the liquid out. No, don't do that. It's only a quarter cup and you want that moisture In to the meatballs. And here's the thing, those breadcrumbs and milk have been sitting in the bowl of my stand mixer. And that's another thing that I find is a fabulous tool. So we'll talk about that as we put this stuff in here.
What we're putting in here is
that pound of ground beef and a pound of fatty, sweet Italian sausage, and we're putting it in the stand mixer with the milk and the breadcrumbs, and then we're also adding a large egg. Okay, so what do we need to
do before we mix? We need to add our spices, and they're all in here. Always the same. I keep these the same because I want my meatballs to be consistent every time I make them. Two tablespoons dried minced parsley. Dried parsley? I love dried parsley in this. Oh my god, what are you, my grandmother? Yep. Two teaspoons of oregano, a teaspoon of salt, and a half a teaspoon each of grated nutmeg. And a half a teaspoon of pepper. Now, see, this is, uh,
this is the difference between the chef and the writer. He put dried oregano in there, but he didn't say dried oregano, so I'm gonna add it. Dried oregano, but dried parsley?
Yeah, I love dried parsley. Okay, I'm turning the mixer on, I'm letting this go now. I love using the stand mixer for ground beef, And it stems from my experience making Chinese Dumplings, where you're supposed to only mix, maybe you don't know this, but when you make Chinese dumplings, you're supposed to mix the meat in one direction only. What? What? What? And you keep stirring. No, it's true. Only in one direction
until My physics brain is speaking loudly right now, and I don't have much of a physics brain left. And you do that But it's speaking
loudly. Until the meat mixture starts to develop little stringy bits, and they're kind of all going in one direction. And then You want it to be pasty with stringy bits. Look, that's what I learned. I learned it from the internet. And it's true. I
learned it from the
internet. Actually, okay, let's go. I'm gonna turn this off. We're gonna look at this. You got The stringy stuff's happening with the meme. Did you learn
this part from the internet, too? Mmm, yeah. And now,
the fun part.
I learned it. I'm not over. I learned it from the internet. A. How old are you? I mean, really, honestly. Very. Very. Yes, you deserve to be on Facebook. And two. Holy crap, don't we know that the internet is a cesspool of misinformation? We're on the internet. Well, yeah, and, uh, we are.
We're
part
of the cesspool. So, I have now oiled up my hands with olive oil and I am forming like golf ball sized balls, right? And I am rubbing them with oil and making them smooth. And I am putting them on a roasting pan. And Mark has turned the oven on for me. What'd you turn it
on to? To 375. And it's on convection because we want as much browning as possible. And while we're doing this, and while he's making these, I just want to say that what I find so funny is that my New York City husband knows what a golf ball is. This just tells you how long we've lived in the country with country clubs.
I grew up. In New York City, going to miniature golf, putt putt. So I knew about golf balls, they were pink and green and blue and yellow. And you had to get them through the clown's nose and all of that. So I
knew all about golf balls. So did you go to the putt putt that had the Our Lady of the Bathtub like I did? No,
this was Jewish putt putt. Jewish putt putt? Yeah, it was like, you had to get it through the menorah. Oh. That is absurd. But it was right across the street from the best diner that ever existed in Queens, New York. Yeah, I'm not
talking anymore to you because you're talking about Jewish putt putt. The Seville, you've been to that diner. I have. You have. Um, okay, so what I'm gonna do is, uh, get away from Jewish putt putt because it's just the, there's too much anti Semitism waiting to happen right there. Okay. I'm gonna talk about what I'm doing, which is I am chopping a small yellow onion. And I have one of those green.
You can also use a small green bell pepper if you want, but, um, a cubanelle or italian frying pepper, I've stemmed it, I'm cutting it away, and I'm chopping it, and I'm gonna also chop up two cloves of garlic.
And while you're doing that, I have put a flame under my pot, and I've put in three tablespoons of olive oil, and to that, this is the way I like to do things. I'm adding a tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary. Oh, suddenly it's fresh. We
don't have to use the dried stuff
anymore. One and a half teaspoons of fennel seeds, a teaspoon of chili flakes, and a teaspoon of anchovy paste. And I put those aromatics and spices into the oil. And they fry up and they get very flavorful and delicious, but I don't want to burn them. And then we're going to throw all those veggies that Mark chipped up into the pan.
Right. And so all this goes in the pan. And if you're worried about anchovy paste and you think, Gross, I don't want that in meatballs. Trust me, it just cooks down and becomes this wildly Savory background taste in everything. It makes it so much more delicious. So we're going to step away from this for a moment and let it reduce
and come back. The onions and peppers are all browned on the edges. Everything is wilted down. It's absolutely gorgeous. So we're reducing the heat and we're adding one pound of sliced cremini mushrooms. That is brown button mushrooms or baby portobello mushrooms. And here's a trick. Now is the time to add salt. A half a teaspoon will help draw the moisture out of these mushrooms and that moisture will evaporate. I want the mushrooms to reduce and brown just like the onions did.
About five minutes. We got to come back to that. So wait, before we do that, wait,
wait,
wait. I think
that this is a really important thing. Um, you do have to let mushrooms sweat and you have to let that liquid come out and then reduce down. Otherwise you can have a really watery sauce. Mushrooms are So loaded with water and moisture. You really need to let that come out. And plus that also, as it reduces, adds a ton of flavor to the sauce. So, okay, we're going to cut away and come back. Now it's time to deglaze the pan. So we have about a half a cup of dry vermouth.
You could also use unsweetened apple juice if you don't want any liquor. If you want to get fancy, you can use dry white wine, use dry cherry, use more salad. You can use masala, you can get really as
fancy as you want. Just don't open up the a hundred dollars bottle of Barolo.
Don't, no, do not deglaze with that. And don't deglaze with bourbon. Or if you don't wanna burn your house down. So you pour that in, scrape and you scrape everything up. And now it comes. The big thing, the jar of
Moody tomato sata, which is a tomato puree from Italy. We have talked about Moody before. It's been one of the things making us happy in food this week. Ever since I discovered Mutti, it is all I use. In fact, this summer, it is just about getting tomato time, and I don't even think I'm going to put up my own tomatoes this year, because there's Mutti. And while I thought Mutti passata was the best thing I ever found, I found a level of Mutti that's even better. It's this Toscana Mutti.
It gives the name of the farm where the tomatoes are from. It gives the varietal of tomatoes. If you could find Mootie and you can find this Toscana mootie, use it that's been poured in and I'm not wasting a drop of it It's very thick. So I'm rinsing the jar out with some water and pouring
that in Okay, and that really honestly is the bid and so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna take those Meatballs, they have browned in the oven for how long they've been in there about 15 minutes And we're gonna take them out of the oven and we're gonna put them in this sauce and cover it reduce the heat to low And let it simmer for one hour long time It's gonna simmer some of that brownie coating on the meatballs is gonna come off into the sauce It's all gonna get much richard.
You want this at a really slow? Simmer not too much. It
always amazes me when people throw meatballs right into a sauce like this without browning them. I don't understand that you just boiling them. They've got to be browned. If you don't want to brown them in the oven, I sure you could brown them in another skillet if you want, but that takes such a mess and so much time. I have even in my life done them in the air fryer.
If you, if you don't brown your meatballs, um, just to be gross, you end up with meat pudding. You end up with this like really. Soft meat pudding balls. Oh, I just, gross. Soft meat pudding balls. Oh, my. Okay, so this is going to go about an hour, and we will be back to taste it and dish it up.
It smells so good in here. The tomatoes have reduced a bit. The sauce is thick, but not too thick. And the last thing I want to do before we eat it is tear up some fresh basil leaves. I have like 12 basil leaves here, and I'm going to Put those in, stir them in. I want that fresh basil flavor when we eat these. We're going to ladle this up. These are hot, so we're gonna have to like do something Mark hates, which is blow on your food. No,
I'm not blowing on it. I'm just waiting. So what you do is you dish it up, you coat it, you put as much grated Parmesan cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano, please, into the bowl, and then I add a ton. of cracked black pepper, and I continue to salt because salt is my, my weakness in life.
Yeah, I think to me that the cheese is going to add enough salt to this. No, not nearly enough. I am, I'm going to blow on this because I want to try it. Oh, this is so hot. Savory. It's hot. It's hot, but it's hot. It's delicious. It's so savory. Wow. The problem with tomato sauces for me is sometimes they could be too sweet. Yes. And the is not we. The moti is not sweet. We didn't add any sugar. Yes. Onions are sweet and even mushrooms have a sweetness to them. And we use sweet sausage.
Oh. And ground beef is sweet, but it's not sugar. Sweet. These are. A savory deliciousness.
Yeah, it's really good. And I just want to say that, uh, Bruce buys the Moody. It's expensive. And so if you don't know this, um, you can often find it on sale at places like World Market. Um. Home Goods. And Home Goods. You can often find it there discounted. And if you do, just buy it up. In fact, Bruce looks at the World Market sales. And when he sees Moody on sale, he orders a case. And, uh,
goes and picks it up. Not only that, World Market has the thing where if you order online and then you go to pick it up, they take 20 percent off. So, not only do I get a great sale, I get even more discount on it. Yeah, so,
it's just worth the effort to get better tomato passata, to get the real thing. I know, it's crazy. sounds really funny, but there's nothing really extraordinary in our meatballs other than maybe, uh, the anchovy paste. Yeah. There's nothing really crazy here. The deal is the passata. It's all about that tomato. It is all about the tomato. It is. And we eat this not with noodles, uh, I just should tell you. We eat this with grilled baguettes. Pieces, grilled bread pieces. Slice them in
half, rub them with olive oil, salt them, and put them either on the grill or in the air fryer until they're crunchy. You can even rub the bread with garlic and turn it into grilled garlic bread if you want. These are a fabulous dinner. These will last us for a couple of meals. And this is worth making any time of the year.
Let me just say, before we get to the last segment of the podcast, it would be great if you could rate this podcast, if you could give it a review, even great podcast. Thanks so much for that, because we are unsupported and choose to remain that way. And we would like to remain that way. So the way that you can help us and support us is by giving us a rating. If you haven't ever done that, just go out to whatever platform you're on. And dare I ask it, give us five stars and.
Just a comment, like nice podcast. If you can't, that really helps things in the analytics. And it's the way we can remain supported. Okay.
¶ What's making us happy in food this week: Santa Rosa plums and ice cream.
As is traditional, the final segment of this podcast, what's making us happy in food this week.
My sister's generosity. She's the best. sent a 20 pound box of Santa Rosa plums from the tree in her backyard in California. She does it every year. And I opened that box and I made a 10 jars of Santa Rosa plum jam. And I have cut up the. Other half of them. And I'm about to make Santa Rosa plum. Yeah,
she just goes and gets a flat rate box and shoves it full of plums and mails it from California and it shows up every year. And in fact, she asked if we wanted a second box and I might take her up on it. Yeah, I know. It's crazy how much fruit they produce in their backyard from these plum trees. And it is really good. What's making me happy in food this week is something that's kind of weird. Um, I'm sure you can hear it. I'm all stopped up and I'm a little coffee.
And that's because yes, I have had the plague COVID and it's been disgusting to have it. And, uh, I was my first time. I thought I was going to get to donate my body to science as the first COVID free body, but no, I caught it. Um, from a very, very thoughtless friend who chose to go out to dinner with us while she was testing positive.
Um, that's a whole different subject, but what's making me happy in food this week is that I've gotten to eat a lot of ice cream and I love ice cream and ice cream is my go to sick food and I have been eating ice cream like Crazy over the last week because it's just the go to comfort food in the world for me. And yes, I prefer swirly ice creams. So chocolate swirls and caramel swirls and salt caramel. That's all the stuff that I really go for is the swirly ice creams with chocolate and caramel.
And I've just been indulging myself like crazy. And it's been really fabulous to eat really good ice cream, even if I had to get the plate. So that's our. Uh, podcaster for this week. Thanks for being a part of our time on the internet. We appreciate your being on this journey with us, and we certainly appreciate your spending time
with us. And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food. So go to our Facebook group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, and tell us what's making you happy in food this week. And we look at those, we share them. Sometimes we make them and talk about them here on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.