morsels & sauces

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on this flight to Milan. The captain has turned off the seatbelt sign, and you are now free to move about the cabin.  In a few moments, the flight attendants will be passing through with drinks as well as a heavy, holiday meal of osso buco and risotto, two classic dishes from Milan. During the summer of 2003, the husband and I spent almost two months in Germany and Italy. The husband had gotten a job at a lab in Leipzig during the  hottest summer on record  in Europe. We sweltered and sweat and wilted our way through Belluno, Venice, Rome, Verona, Prague, Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Dresden. After eight weeks, we spent our last day in Europe in Milan. We had arrived from Germany in a predictably prompt and air-conditioned train, found our predictably unair-conditioned hotel chosen merely because of its proximity to the Central Station, and just as predictably determined that we  must  go to a late dinne...

Adapted from Cookbook #25:  Williams Sonoma Essentials of Slow Cooking Recipe: Meatballs in Tomato Sauce It's summer solstice. The longest day of the year.  The shortest night. Symbolically speaking, I could use these long days and some short nights. The days: a dear high school friend came to visit from North Carolina, school let out for summer, World Cup soccer launched into full force. But also the nights:  a memorial service and an unrelated but surprisingly tearful goodbye to a friend who is moving to Ohio. In other words, give me more days than nights right now. So to cook at the midpoint of 2010, I quite simply made the homey, satisfying goodness of meatballs. These particular meatballs are a wonderful blend of three meats (beef, pork, and veal (yes, I realize that's still cow, but work with me here)), and they braise (rather than brown) in a tomato and chipotle sauce.  And all of this from Williams Sonoma Essentials of Slow Cooking .  We n...