Meatballs and Frybread

Meatballs on Frybread

Makes 15 Meatballs

Ingredients

Meatballs

1 Lb Ground Beef

½ Lb Ground Pork

3 Stalks Parsley

2 Pinches Salt

5 Cloves Garlic

2/3 Cup of Mozzarella Cheese

¼ Cup Water

6 Tb Bread Crumbs

½ Ts Black Pepper

Olive Oil For Cooking

Frybread

½ Ts Baking Soda

¾ Cup Water

1 Tb Sugar

1 Tb + 1 Ts Melted Butter

2 Ts Yeast

2 Cup Flour

Pinch Salt

Olive Oil For Cooking

Sauce

4 Pounds Tomatoes, Stemmed, pureed

4 Tb Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 Tb Chopped Basil

1 Tb Sugar

1 Tb Lemon Juice

Salt to Taste

Directions

Sauce

Mix all of the ingredients for the sauce in a large mixing bowl and then place it in a large pot on low.  Allow the sauce to reduce by about ¼ to 1/3.  You should see the sauce go from a light red color to a richer, darker red color. 

Frybread

Bloom yeast by mixing it with the sugar and warm water.  Allow this mixture to sit for 5 minutes until it starts to foam at the top.

Place the other ingredients into a large mixing bowl and then mix in the water/sugar/yeast mixture. 

Knead this dough with your hands until all of the ingredients are mixed in.  You will probably need to knead for about 5 minutes.  The consistency of the dough should be slightly sticky.  The dough will also have a slight sheen due to the addition of the butter.  Once the dough has been mixed and kneaded, allow it to rise for 1 hour.

Separate the dough into about 10 pieces and roll them out into rounds with about a 6 inch diameter.

Then, place each piece of dough in a frying pan with about 2 Tb of Olive Oil on medium-low.  Cook on each side until it is golden brown.  Also, just be certain that the center is fully cooked.  This may take a little practice. 

Meatballs

Mix the garlic cloves and parsley with the water and blend them in a blender.  Take this mélange and mix it with the other ingredients for the meatballs. 

Use your hands to mix the ingredients until they are evenly spread and mixed together. 

Then, separate the meatball mixture into 15 separate spheres. 

Lastly, brown the meatballs on high in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil.  Do not cook the meat balls through.  They should just be brown on the outside.  Also, it is probably wise to brown the meatballs in batches of 5.  Otherwise, the skillet cools down and the meatballs will not be properly browned. 

After your meatballs are browned, place them in the pot with the tomato sauce.  Cook the sauce in meatballs on low for about a half hour until the meatballs are cooked through.

Serve the meatballs with the fry bread.  You can either eat this with a fork and knife or you can use the fry bread to make wraps with the meatballs.  

Eggplant Parmesan

Serves 4

Ingredients
3 Medium sized eggplants
3 Eggs
Breadcrumbs seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder
Flour (1 to 2 cups)

Sauce
Same sauce as lasagna.  I used 4 times each ingredient for this recipe.

Cheese
2 to 3 cups of Mozzarella
1/2 cup of Parmesan 

Directions
Skin and slice your eggplant into 1/3 inch thick coins.

Then set up a station as shown below.  In the first bowl is the flour, then egg and lastly the bread crumb.  Each piece of eggplant should be submerged in each of these bowls.  First, flour.  Then, egg,  Lastly, breadcrumb.

Then, place the pieces of eggplant in a skillet on medium high with enough oil to keep the eggplant from touching the bottom of the pan.  Cook each piece until golden brown. 

Once all of the eggplant is cooked, stack the eggplant in a casserole dish lasagna style: Layer eggplant, layer sauce, layer eggplant, layer cheese (both cheeses)

Lastly, place in an over until the cheese is all melted and the top is brown.

Fresh Lasagna

Ingredients

Sauce

7 Tomatoes (De-stemmed and skinned)
2 Tbs Olive Oil
6 Cloves Garlic (Minced)
.5 ts Black Pepper
Salt to taste
1 to 2 ts of Sugar
1 ts lemon juice
1 Fresh Chili Chopped
1 Dried Chili Chopped

Pasta
3 Eggs
3 Cups Flour
Pinch Salt
1 Glug Olive Oil
Water if the dough is dry

Cheese
1 Cup Mozzarella Shredded
300 grams Ricotta

Directions
Preparing the sauce

Add the tomatoes to a large sauce pot on medium with the olive oil. Mash the tomatoes with a potato masher. Add the other ingredients and allow the sauce to simmer for about a half hour, or until the sauce gains the right consistency.  If you prefer, you can  blend the sauce with an immersion blender. 

Preparing the Pasta
Mix the ingredients.  You are trying to get a pasta dough with just a slight stickiness.   Separate the dough into 6 balls and roll each ball out into a 7 by 7 inch square.  Make sure that the dough is about 1/8 inch thick.  Next, quickly boil each pasta sheet.  Because the the sheets are rather big, you probably want to do with one at a time.

Assembling the lasagna
This lasagna will be 7 layers.  I prefer to alternate sauce, ricotta and mozzarella in between layers of pasta.  The top layer should be sauce and mozzarella.

Fresh Cheese Ravioli

Makes 20 Raviolis

Ingredients
Pasta
3 Cups flour
3 Eggs
2 glugs of Olive Oil
1 ts Salt
3 tbs Water

Filling
200 g Ricotta Cheese
1/2 Egg
2 Roasted Red Peppers
20 Spinach leaves

Directions

Creating the Pasta
Mix ingredients in a bowl. Once the mixture begins to form a dough, knead the mixture on a flower surface. You want a thicker dough that is only slightly sticky.

Here is my ball of pasta dough:













Making the filling:

Coat the spinach with a little olive oil and broil it on a baking sheet in the oven. Once it cooks down by half, cut the spinach into small bits (a few millimeters squared)

Here is my spinach for the filling:













Cut the red pepper into similar sized pieces:














Lastly, mix the pepper and spinach with ricotta and 1/2 egg. Your filling is now ready.

Forming the Ravioli
Take your pasta dough and roll it out on a flat, floured surface. Roll the dough out until it is 2 to 3 mm thick. It is important the the dough is thin and it its important that the dough has an even thickness throughout. If you have a small workspace you may need to separate your dough into a few pieces and carry out the forming process a few separate times.

Here is my dough rolled out. I separated my dough into 4 pieces.













Place some dollops (3/4 tbs) of filling onto the dough. These dollops should be placed about 4 inches in from the top edge and 3 inches apart. I could fit 3 onto my dough.














Next, fold the dough over itself leaving dough on top and bottom of the filling. Lastly, use a cup with an appx 2 inch diameter to cut out your ravioli.














Your ravioli should now be cut out and ready to boil.

Here are mine:















Tomato sauce

Ingredients
9 Tomatoes
2 Tsp Lemon Juice
1/2 tsp Apple vinegar
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 tsp Garlic Powder
dash Salt
1/2 tsp Pepper
1/4 cup Sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tsp tomato paste

Directions: First, cut tomatoes into small pieces (1/2 cm by 1/2 cm) and seed them. Next, place olive oil in a frying pan and let it heat up. Once the pan is hot, add the tomatoes and let them sautee. Add the spices, lemon juice, vinegar and water and allow the tomatoes to become tender. The consistancy should be almost that of a tomato sauce, but that tomatoes should still retain some of their form.

Personal Pizza

Take 1/2 of the dough created from the previously posted dough recipe. You will have a ball with a diameter of about 1.5 to 2 inches. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to a diameter of 6 to 7 inches. Then, transfer the pizza to a greased baking sheet. Lastly, crimp the outside to make the crust.












Place the pizza dough (without cheese, sauce or toppings) on the bottom rack of your oven at 375 degrees f. Allow the dough to bake through, but do not let it brown. When you remove your sheet from the oven, you essentially have a pizza shell.

Remove the pizza shell from the oven and top it will about 3/4 cups of sauce and a cup of mozzarella cheese. You may also add any toppings you wish. I prefer pepperoni.






(First sauce)











(Then Cheese and toppings)







Place the pizza back in the oven at 400 degrees f. First place the pizza on the bottom rack to allow the bottom to brown. Once the bottom of the pizza is browned, place the pizza on the top rack to allow the cheese to brown. The cooking on the bottom will take about 10 to 15 minutes. Check the pizza from time to time to check its doneness. Cooking on the top will take much less time as the cheese will brown quickly.

You are then ready to eat your pizza

Here is mine:

Quick Tomato Sauce

Ingredients (Makes about 1 cup of sauce)
1 tsp lemon
1 glug Olive Oil
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 beef bullion cube
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp pepper
Dash salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 Chili
2/3 cup water

Mix ingredients in a bowl. Pour into a small sauce pot and simmer for 4 to 5 minutes.
Make sure to remove the chili before using.

Pizza Dough

Ingredients (For 2 personal pizzas)
1.5 Cups Flour
3/4 Cup Warm Water
1 Glug Olive Oil
Pinch Salt
1.5 Tsp Sugar
2/3 Packet Yeast

Mix ingredients in a mixing bowl. When the the mixture begins to come together as a dough, remove the contents from the bowl and place it on a floured surface. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes. You want the consistency of the dough to be slightly sticky, but you want it to be solid enough so that it can be kneaded and pressed with your hands. If the dough is sticking all over your hands it is too sticky.

After the dough has been kneaded, place it in a greased bowl, cover the top of the bowl and allow the dough to rise for appx 40 minutes.















After the dough has risen for 40 minutes, it is possible to wrap the dough with cellophane and freeze it.












This photo shows the pizza dough rolled out on a tray. This image shows the size of a pizza that 1/2 of the recipe can produce.