meatball and spinach risotto

So something I like to make is a meatball risotto. I am not sure if people usually put meatballs in risotto. I have a feeling they don't, but I don't care. I love meatballs, and I love risotto, so I see no reason not to combine the two into one meal.


risotto meatball and spinach, topped with shaved parmesan

I've made this meatball risotto twice now, once last summer for my dear friend Mary Kate, and now again this summer for Nathan, his mom and his grandma. I make little meatballs and cook them in the pot I'll be using for the risotto. Once they are cooked through, I take them out of the pot and add the onions, and then the rice. In this instance I also added some thinly sliced garlic scapes. Otherwise, the preparation of this risotto was pretty much the same as it always is. White wine, followed by lots and lots of chicken stock. At the end I added the chopped spinach some nice food co-op parsley, a hunk of butter and some shaved parmesan.


salad with radishes and garlic scapes

I also made up this beautiful fresh salad of Boston lettuce from the food co-op, more garlic scapes and those green market radishes. I've been working on finished up that $1 bunch since the tenth of June now! That is just crazy. Yesterday I tried roasting them, I'm so desperate to get rid of them!

I'll probably do a more in depth write up of my meatballs at a future date, but I usually just mix in seasoned breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, minced garlic and parsley and form it into little balls. I try not to over mix the meat so it won't get tough. This particular time, I was using meat I had gotten over the winter from the old good co-op, and I think it was a little too lean because they weren't the most tender. Or maybe I just needed to add more milk and eggs. In any event, these meatballs didn't have to stand on their own, so they were quite good enough for my purposes. We all enjoyed the meal, and each others' company, which is really all you can ask for.

In one of my earliest posts I had talked about another dinner I made and Nathan's grandma's house. It was a very time consuming affair, so this time I did a lot of the prep work before heading down to Chelsea. Having the meatballs mixed and the garlic scapes and radishes chopped meant I didn't have to waste much time slicing and dicing, and that I could dive right into the cooking. This meant I was able to have dinner on the table only 30 to 40 minutes later than initially planned. I'm getting faster you guys, slowly but surely!