Friday food

This is a story of a cooking adventure that almost ended with great sorrow, but--spoiler!--ends with peace and contentment instead. Isn't that nice, for the end of a long week?

The story begins, as so many of these do, with me browsing cooking blogs and finding a recipe that sounds particularly nummy: Asian meatballs in garlic black bean sauce. Hey, we all like meatballs, and we all like Asian food. Slam dunk.

Starts out like a standard meatball, with ground meat (pork, in this case), garlic, onions, and egg, then switches course a bit by adding panko bread crumbs, soy sauce, fresh ginger, and crushed red pepper. All squooshed up and formed into meatballs.

I really enjoy squooshing up meat like this. There's something very gratifying about forcing it to my will.

Then I browned the meatballs, followed by baking them in a 400F oven. Oh, they smelled good! All that oniony, garlicy, gingery goodness!

While baking, I made the garlic black bean sauce, which is a simple concoction of honey, black bean garlic sauce, and more soy and ginger. I tossed that back into the skillet, where it bubbled and thickened. And toil and troubled. Oh yeah...I saw MacBeth last week. Overall, I didn't love it, but it was set during the 1940's and Lady MacBeth had this amazing coat on during a coronation scene that I'd kill Duncan for. Who wants to be king? I just want the coat.

Anyway. So here we have our meatballs coming out of the oven, and the Teens gather around, oohing and aahing and picking pieces of meat out of the pan and proclaiming them to be tasty. I've also stir-fried some veggies and made some rice, so the last thing to do is toss the meatballs in the garlic black bean sauce.

I was ecstatic. Delicious! Utterly so!

But, as it turned out, I was the only one who held that opinion. While none of the males at Casa Knit Think thought this were outright bad, they all agreed it was "over the top." Too much of something for their (obviously pedestrian) tastes.

Now this rarely happens, and it makes me sorrowful indeed, to discover a recipe I love that no one else does. Because, as I'm usually cooking for all of us, it doesn't make sense to make it again, if I'm the only one who likes it. And I really, really liked it.

So I was all gloomy and mournful until I finally remembered: they liked the meatballs *before* the sauce. Voila! Problem solved. Frankly, I loved the sauce, and I would happily take the extra and drown my veggies in it. They can have their plain, middle-of-the-road meatballs, and I'll have the kicked-up version.

See? Happy ending.

Comments

[Shelley]

Those look absolutely delicious! I also get bummed out when I like something and no one else does. Then I know if I do make it, I will just eat it all myself, which could be bad! It sounds like you have a good plan for those meatballs next time!

[Carrie K]

Oh yum. And problem solved deliciously for all concerned.

Y'know, you could've rushed the stage and ripped the coat off of her....Lady McB has a fiercesome reputation but honestly, she's only a danger to kings. ;)

[kathy b]

I would love the black bean sauce meatballs!

[Babette]

Very impressive. You managed to work Macbeth into a cooking post on a knitting blog.

You totally rock.

[Chris]

Whew!

[Guinifer]

Man! The sauce! It can ruin a day, huh?

[kate]

Glad you found a happy ending! I too, am sad when I make a recipe that I love and the boys not so much.

[cursingmama]

I'm never above making extra of something I love & others don't. Then I freeze it for my own tv dinners :D

[rudee]

You achieved umami--for which they had no appreciation. It sounds delicious and is likely something I'll try.

[Paula]

Yummy,Amy. How come my food never looks that good when I am prepping it? You can cook them for me, I'll appreciate your effort.