If you’ve read “Heat,” Bill Buford’s superb account of the year he spent working with Mario Batali, you probably remember the moment when Batali dives into one of his kitchen’s garbage cans, retrieves a handful of celery leaves and brandishes them in the face of the poor cook who threw them away, shouting, “This is what we do: we take food, we dress it up, then we sell it at a profit!”
Most food trends in this country begin in the restaurants of New York and spread outward. Because they are disseminated by a powerful publicity machinery that is also based in New York, it’s easy to forget that these trends are sometimes based as much on chefs’ frugality and need to make a profit as on flavor.
Take the craze for meatballs. Like the vogue for organ meats championed by Batali and other chefs, and the return of house-made charcuterie, meatballs are on so many New York menus not just because they are delicious but because they are cheap to produce and can incorporate every tasty scrap of unused meat.
My wife and I recently dined at a newly opened hot spot in Manhattan. We were guests of one of the chefs, who informed us that the restaurant, a 70-seater not much bigger than Duo, cost more than $2 million to build and paid a monthly rent of over $20,000, over four times the rate per square foot of the average restaurant in Denver. Higher New York prices and smaller New York portions make up a fraction of this difference in rent. The rest comes from the chef’s ingenuity in dressing up lesser cuts of meat.
At our friend’s restaurant, we sampled a duck meatball, a golf-ball-sized piece of meat set on a bed of greens. The meatball, made with ground duck leg and skin and pureed gizzards, was a triumph of thrifty usage, as well as one of the most intensely flavored meat dishes I’ve ever tried.
A good meatball has three components: just-ground, well-marbled meat; a mixture of spices and fresh or dried herbs; and a binder to hold the meatball together and keep it moist, usually milk or buttermilk, eggs or bread crumbs, but sometimes pureed liver.
I like to make this recipe for lamb meatballs with freshly ground lamb shoulder and serve it with pita and sauces from the eastern Mediterranean: especially tzatziki, the Greek cucumber and yogurt sauce, and harissa, the North African hot pepper sauce.
John Broening cooks at Duo restaurant, .
Lamb Meatballs
Makes about 16 small meatballs.
Ingredients
1 pound freshly ground lamb
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1/3 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon chopped sage
4 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small yellow onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup bread crumbs
Directions
Place the lamb in a mixing bowl. Add salt, paprika, cinnamon, cumin, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, sage and parsley.
Heat the olive oil in a small pan. Add the onions and cook until tender and lightly colored, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute. Cool the mixture and add it to the ground lamb.
Mix the buttermilk with the bread crumbs and let sit at least 20 minutes.
Add the bread crumb mixture to the lamb and mix well with your hands. Form the lamb mixture into about 16 small round meatballs (wetting your hands helps to shape the meatballs).
Brown in a heavy skillet over medium, cover and cook until the meatballs are cooked to medium, about 10 minutes. Serve with pita, tzatziki and harissa.
