More Than Meatballs: From Arancini to Zucchini Fritters and 65 Recipes in Between

by Michele Anna Jordan, Liza Gershman (Photographs), L. John Harris (Foreword)

Round morsels of bite-sized savory foods—meat, poultry, fish, grains, and vegetables—have never been more popular. Cooks in Turkey, alone, choose from more than 150 traditional recipes for meatballs. It’s nearly impossible to get a seat in New York City’s Meatball Shop, and food trucks that feature an enormous array of meatballs are popping up all over the United States and beyond.

More Than Meatballs offers dozens of recipes, from classic Italian polpetti and French boule de viande to Spanish and Mexican albondigas, Moroccan merguez meatballs, Sicilian arancini (stuffed risotto balls), and carrot fritters. A final chapter features meatballs in traditional and contemporary contexts, with soups, salads, tacos, sandwiches, and, of course, spaghetti.

In addition, the book offers natural options for gluten-free meatballs and practical suggestions for making your kitchen meatball friendly.

Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Good Books and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of cookbooks, including books on juicing, grilling, baking, frying, home brewing and winemaking, slow cookers, and cast iron cooking. We’ve been successful with books on gluten-free cooking, vegetarian and vegan cooking, paleo, raw foods, and more. Our list includes French cooking, Swedish cooking, Austrian and German cooking, Cajun cooking, as well as books on jerky, canning and preserving, peanut butter, meatballs, oil and vinegar, bone broth, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Cooking

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2014

Reviews

[Yaaresse · Rating 2 out of 5]

It pains me to give one of Jordan's cookbooks anything but a glowing review, but the majority of the recipes in this one are just too fussy and too unrealistic in both time and cost. Meatballs are basically peasant food, and they shouldn't end up being more expensive or trouble to make than feast food.

Many of the recipes depend on finding lace (or caul) fat and wrapping each meatball in it. Not going to happen. Not going to happen due to cost, due to most people not having access to butchers who still know what caul fat is (because most "butchers" aren't really butchers anymore, but repackagers), and due to the fact that most people don't have the time or interest in spending their afternoons wrapping fat around meatballs. Many recipes also call for grinding meat yourself rather than making use of the fact most groceries carry ground lamb, turkey, chicken, and pork. It's disappointing that she didn't provide variations that don't require hunting down specialty butchers or that aren't so expensive to make that the lowly meatball becomes more expensive than steak. I also don't know too many people who have the time, equipment, or interest in grinding meat at home anymore.

If you can improvise past the lace fat, there are some tasty-sounding recipes in the book. Some of the non-meat options have potential. We'll see. Unfortunately, getting the fat/lean ration in ground meat dishes can make or break a dish, and I haven't been interested in wasting ingredients experimenting. Had I wanted to experiment, I wouldn't have bought a cookbook.

[Elisabetta Roma · Rating 3 out of 5]

ogni tanto è interessante cimentarsi nella lettura di un manuale di cucina in inglese, inoltre ci sono un sacco di idee per piatti più nord europei a cui noi non siamo abituati.
Consigliato.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found a few recipes here that I might like to make, but not many. Was put off by the author’s name dropping and apparent Sonoma County snobbery.