Thursday, May 12, 2005

let's experiment

The theme of tonight was experimentation. I made "meatballs" with mozzarella inside for dinner. I was trying to use up the ground beef and mozzarella all at once, and I thought they might work well together. I looked up meatball recipes and couldn't find anything that sounded like what I wanted to do. Most of the recipes involved mixing the beef with bread crumbs and eggs and all kinds of things, and I just wasn't into all that. I wanted it to be easy, meat and cheese, maybe some tomato sauce, end of story. So, in the end that's what I did. I seasoned the meat and made it into balls and stuffed pieces of mozzarella inside, covered it up and put them all in a baking dish. They baked at 350 for 30 minutes and that was it. I was surprised by how well it worked, they were simple, but flavorful and good. Dad was thrilled. The picture does not make them look all that great, but I did enjoy them.

The other experiment of the day was Chocolate Walnut Meringues. Having never made meringues before, this was very much an experiment for me, I had no idea what I was doing. I had to whip the egg whites into still peaks, and although I'd heard this term numerous times before I still found it difficult to tell when my whites had reached that desired consistency. It's a very good thing I have the stand alone mixer because it would have likely been a disaster if it wasn't for that wonderful contraption. I did have to stop the whipping process twice to go look for references on how to get stiff (but not dry) peaks. I'm sure stopping in the middle is not highly recommended, but it all worked out in the end. The cookies came out meringue-like and good. I think I like them better than the oatmeal, not necessarily on flavor, but just on texture. I had one tonight with my nicely frozen coffee ice cream. They make a good match.

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