The idea behind it was to have something hearty, filling, but not heavy. He nailed it. His favorite part was the light and airy-ness. I'm going to break it down into the three separate components: turkey meat balls, portobello red wine sauce, and mashed cauliflower.
Turkey Meatballs
Ingredients:
20 oz. Ground turkey (93/7)
2 Eggs
3 slices White bread, crust removed
1/2 c. Panko Bread crumbs
1 t Orange zest
1 T Orange juice
1 t Dried thyme
1 t Dried minced onion
8-10 leaves Sage, chopped
1/2 c. 2% milk
Kosher salt
Fresh cracked pepper
Olive oil
Directions:
1: Place the turkey in a mixing bowl. Add 1 T Kosher salt, 1 t fresh cracked pepper,
drizzle of olive oil, eggs, orange zest and juice, thyme, minced onion, and sage.
Lay the pieces or bread across the top the of the ingredients and pour the milk
over the bread. Gently fold all of the ingredients together until they are
combined. Add the bread crumbs. Tip from Chuck: General rule of thumb is
one egg per pound of meat, he increased to two eggs because of the extra 4 oz
of meat we were using. Had planned on only using two slices of bread and no
bread crumbs but the turkey was so moist it would hold its shape. The extra
egg did create a much lighter meatball but you can experiment with one egg
and less bread/breadcrumbs. Just don't over handle your meat or it will get
tough.
2: Form into 2" meatballs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3: Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add a single layer of
meatballs and brown each side. Once all of the sides are brown, place them on
a baking sheet lined with non-stick foil and place into the oven, preheated to
300 degrees F. Don't throw our your drippings, save them for the sauce! Tip
from Chuck: You might need to brown the meatballs in two batches, we did.
4: Remove meatballs from the oven when their internal temperature reaches 165
degrees F.
Red Wine Portobello Sauce
Ingredients:
2 T Flour
2 T Butter
1 T Olive Oil
1 Shallot, minced
8 oz Baby Bella mushrooms, sliced
1/4 c. Red wine (we used Ruffino Chianti)
2 c. Beef broth
1 T Sage, chopped
Directions:
1: After the meatballs have been removed from the pan, add the butter and olive oil to
the pan. Tip from Chuck: The olive oil will prevent the butter from burning.
Stir in the flour.
2: Add the shallot to allow to soften as the flour cooks out of the roux. Once this cooks
for a few minutes, add the mushrooms. Tip from Chuck: Initially it will look
like it's really drying the sauce out but as the mushrooms cook, they will add
plenty of moisture to the mix.
3: After the mushrooms have cooked for a couple of minutes, add the wine to deglaze
the pan and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes.
4: Add the beef broth , simmer for a few more minutes and then stir in the sage.
Mashed Cauliflower
Ingredients:
5 c. Cauliflower, cut into bite sized florets
1 c. Beef broth
1 c. Water
1 T Kosher salt
1 t Pepper
1 T Chives, chopped
1 T Butter
2 T Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
Directions:
1: Add the first 5 ingredients to a Dutch oven, cover and heat over medium heat until
florets are very tender.
2: Tip from Chuck: Here's where is got a little tricky. Chuck used an immersion
blender to mash the cauliflower but found it to be far too soupy and ended up
using a strainer to thicken it up. Might want to drain the caluliflower and then
mash with a potato masher instead.
3: Stir in butter, Parmesan, and chives and you're ready to serve. (If it was thicker, we
were also going to add a dallop of plain Greek Yogurt.)
While we were eating, Chuck said he was curious on the nutritional content of this. Because he would normally use pork and veal instead of the turkey, add more butter to just about everything, and potatoes instead of cauliflower, he wanted to know what kind of a difference he was really making. I took on the challenge and looked up all of the items to put together an estimate. Here's what I found:
Calories Fat (g) Protein (g) Carbs (g)
Meatballs (batch) 1198 26 150 64
(each) 86 1.9 10.7 4.6
Red Wine Sauce (batch) 515 35.6 15.8 26.4
Cauliflower (batch) 267 14.3 13.8 16.7
Pretty amazing, huh? We each had 3 meatballs and 1/4 of the sauce and cauliflower. Pretty darn good!
