Amuse Bouche

Braised monkfish (or really any fish you want)

I know braise is probably the last word you think of when the mercury is climbing and the dewpoint makes the simple act of getting dressed a sticky event, but trust me on this one you want to make this.
First the braise only takes 20 - 25 minutes...tops.
Second it's based on a recipe Molly Stevens fabulous, award winning, cookbook All about Braising
Third you use boatloads of cherry tomatoes and pretty soon people we will be AWASH in cherry tomatoes so read on and tuck this one away in your little mental file cabinet.

The other beautiful thing about this recipe is that you can chose any nice whitefish you like to braise, or, dare I say it, skip the fish and just toss this heavenly sauce with some pasta, add a salad and a good loaf of crusty bread and mmmm, maybe a nice COLD glass of rose and dinner is done.

Braised Monkfish with Fennel and Cherry Tomatoes

3 ounces pancetta or guanciale, diced
1 fennel bulb, cored, sliced or diced or however you like it
A good pinch of crushed red pepper and if you are in this house, an additional pinch of aleppo pepper because it makes everything taste good
1 pint cherry tomatoes, rinsed
5 cloves garlic, peeled, sliced
5 or 6 basil leaves, rolled like a cigar and cut in thin strips (chiffonade if you are so inclined)
1 monkfish tail (yes, I know, endangered, non-sustainable, but my local monger had it and someone had to buy it)
1/2 cup orzo
Extra virgin olive oil
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Saute the pancetta or guanciale in 2 TBS olive oil until it is just crisp.  Remove and drain, reserve.  Add the chopped fennel and 1/4 cup water, stir, sprinkle with some salt, put the lid on and cook on low heat about 10 minutes or until the fennel is soft. 

Add the tomatoes, the pinch of crushed pepper and slap the lid back on.  Shake the pan a few times, walk away for 5 minutes and get your fish ready or start your water for your pasta or read a few pieces of mail. 

When the tomatoes begin to burst, add the garlic, 2 or 3 more TBS of water, the reserved pancetta, and put the lid on again.  Cook for 5 minutes. 

If using the monkfish, make sure the thin layer, like silverskin, has been removed, rinse your fish, pat dry, sprinkle with salt and pepper on both sides. 

Heat up a nice skillet with 2 TBS of oil and quickly sear your fish on each side, 2 - 3 minutes. 

Nestle the fish into the pan with your lovely braise, taste the sauce for seasonings and add salt and pepper if desired. 

Cover again and cook 5 - 8 minutes or until monkfish is cooked though.

Add your basil and serve. In my case on a bed of orzo tossed with some extra virgin olive oil.

Ragu Coniglio (Rabbit Ragu)

I took four days this week to get ahead with my curriculum planning for create a cook, it's summer mode and we do cooking classes for kids for a week at a time through the end of August, each week with a different theme.  I teach the 11+ and they are in class from 9:30 - 3:30 cooking up a little storm.  How I'd love to make something like this with them when we do Italian, but I would imagine the squeals of terror and the declarations of GROSS when I brought out a rabbit would be too much to bear.  Ah well, maybe one day. 

After pondering what I would make for dinner I remembered having a lovely D'Artagnan rabbit in the freezer upstairs.  I  knew without a moments hesitation that I would make a ragu with it.  In fact, when I ran down the ingredients I would need in my head I knew I had almost every ingredient in house, almost.  After tearing apart my pantry I realised I neglected to restock my dried porcini supply the last time I used it, don't worry, I have already placed a nice bulk order online to freeze. 

Shunning the pyjamas I headed out to the local Whole Paycheck to pick up the dried shrooms and survey the fresh pasta.  Sadly, the widest pasta they had on hand was linguine and the sheets of pasta looked way too thick to consider rolling and cutting so I grabbed 6 of my favourite eggs and a few other items and came home for a nice long day of cooking and writing.  The picture on the top was taken when I made this a few months ago but I never took the time to write it up.  Since today was a nice leisurely day with the windows open, the birds singing, the rain showers coming in and out, I decided to bite the bullet and document the beast here. The other set of pictures I took of breaking down a rabbit into useable pieces was, again, taken a very long time ago, but I include it here in case you ever need a tutorial.

For the squeamish among us, I will put the photos and recipe under the jump.  so many people just can't deal with how much rabbit looks like...well..um...cat, or so I'm told.

Ginger chile Tuna with Cold Sesame Noodles

Trust me, you want to make this.

Ginger Chile Tuna with Cold Sesame Noodles

Sit a nice piece of tuna in a bowl of rice vinegar, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, honey and cilantro with a nice chopped up serrano chile seeds and all. Let it hang out for 30 minutes or an hour.  Heck, have a cocktail. Then grill it, making some nice grill marks, and all the while continue to glaze the fish with the marinade.  Keep the fish as pink as you like it in the center.

Serve with a side of soba noodles tossed with a mixture of sautéed ginger, jalapeño and garlic tossed in a blender and whizzed together with peanut butter, a little tahini, brown sugar, rice vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and sesame oil.  Pour that mixture all over your soba noodles, toss in some sliced scallion and some toasted black and white sesame seeds, chill for an hour or so and then serve.

I'm in the throes of developing recipes for The Hungry Traveler week, visiting Ox Farm in Concord this afternoon and reviewing two new cookbooks Street Food by Tom Kine and Adventures of an Italian Food Lover by Faith Willinger.  Detail on all of these are coming soon.

A Cool Summer Noodle Dish - Otsu

This week at create a cook the theme is vegetarian.  I spent a long time searching for recipes to use as i didn't want to fall into a rut of the usual suspects and I wanted to introduce the kids to some potential new foods.  We made a Camargue Rice Salad with Arugula and Feta, a Bulgur Salad with Chickpeas Roasted Red Pepper and a Spicy Cumin Dressing, Spinach Pasties, Asparagus and Gruyere Feuilletes and in honour of the new movie that opens today that I cannot wait to see, a Ratatouille.  All dishes went over very well with the Camargue Rice Salad receiving particularly good reviews but the dish that I think they liked the most was Otsu.

The recipe for Otsu comes from Heidi Swanson's (of 101 Coobooks.com) new book Super Natural Cooking.
I had seen the Amateur Gourmet had made it one sweltering evening to rave reviews and I had also seen it mentioned before on Heidi's blog as a recipe she made based on a dish she had in a local restaurant.  I chose to make it because I adore cold sesame peanut noodles, but so many kids today have peanut and tree nut allergies I decided to make this dish instead to see if it would satisfy my cold noodle craving just the same and satisfy it did. We all loved this dish!  In fact I liked it so much I made it again for dinner last night.  I didn't happen to have plain buckwheat soba noodles on hand so I used mugwort sobu and it was just as yummy and since I don't love plain tofu and I an indeed a carnivore I had mine with some Spanish tuna on top.  The dressing uses shoyu but you can sub out tamari or even soy if you can't find shoyu. 

This dish has everything you could want for summer.  It's quick to put together, the only stove involved is boiling water for the noodles.  It's loaded with ginger, lemon and sesame oil with a kick of cayenne so the palate gets a nice punch of flavours.  If you want the full recipe, go visit Adam over at Amateur Gourmet as Heidi let him reprint it with her permission.  As for me, I'm going to buy her book on the way to work today, I bet she has a lot more dishes up her sleeve for me to try.

Pad Thai

Last night I taught my Thai class at Newton Community Ed.  Each time I teach this class I tweak the recipes a bit, change things around and edit.

last night we made:
Jasmine Rice
Cucumber Pickle
Fried Spring Rolls (Beef and Shitake)
Chicken with Holy Basil
Thai meatballs with Peanut Sauce
Thai Beef Salad (my personal fave)
and Pad Thai

I've seen many, many Pad Thai recipes and none of them have satisfied me for the necessary mix of hot and sour, salty and sweet.  They all generally made too little sauce to the ratio of noodles and/or incorporated odd ingredients in order to make it 'user friendly'.  A few weeks ago the fabulous Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim fame posted her version of Pad Thai for beginners and something about they way she wrote it, more as a technique primer than a 'recipe', caught my attention. 

First, she has you make a good quantity of the sauce and you balance the flavours in that sauce for the components that are critical for making Thai food - hot, sour, salty, and sweet.  Having made Pad Thai many times I know it is not easy to try and adjust the seasonings in the end.

Most of the ingredients should be easy to find these days.  The only ingredient I had to seek out were the dried shrimp.  I can usually only find these in a true Asian market, or course Super 88 has them if you are in the local Boston area, or perhaps Asian market on Waverly Hill Road in Waltham.  The dried shrimp are kept in the refrigerated section not on the shelf.

When I poked around in the store I happened to find some very, very tiny ones. For an idea of how small those are, one strip of the butcher block underneath them is 2" wide.  The shrimp are between 3 - 5 cm long.  I have bought them in the past and they were much, much larger and very orange.  These, as you can see, are very pale in colour.  These are an important flavour in the dish and I highly recommend seeking them out.

Pim also implores you to treat the shrimp in a particular manner.

It's important to use the mortar here and not your cuisinart, which will turn to dried shrimp into a hard, dried chunks (entirely capable of cracking a tooth) instead of fluffy bits of salty shrimp.

However we didn't have a mortar and pestle last night, I really didn't want to lug my 20 pound slab of marble mortar and pestle with me so we tried using a spoon and a bowl but it was not getting us anywhere near flaky and fluffy.  We dredged through the cupboards and found a mini chopper and I am guessing because these shrimp were so tiny and soft it worked perfectly instead of making shrimp rock candy we had fluffy light shavings and we were off and running.

I confessed to my students after they had made the dish that I had used them as guinea pigs for the recipe, but I don't think they minded at all, the recipe worked perfectly.  This recipe, friends, is restaurant quality Pad Thai.  I highly suggest you go and read her words and heed her advice, this Pad Thai recipe can't lose.

An open letter about Mac and Cheese

Dear Lesli and Phil;

First let me tell you about teaching my first class at Williams-Sonoma last night.  This was my first demo only class versus interactive cooking.  Everything went great.  I had bought everything I needed and packed it in a suitcase on wheels to 'drive' it into the mall, I had my knife roll with my favourite knives and a mini cooler with a pre marinated skirt steak and a flank steak for a swap out demo.  Everything went great.  We had a sold out crowd of 21 and I made it through without running out of things to say.  Everyone came by in the end and said thank you or asked questions.  The best was meeting Sharon who had read through A Year in Gastronomy, she also quit her hi-tech job and enrolled at CSCA in September.  How cool is that!
I'm one of those converts now who chants out that people should follow their dreams.  Getting up in the morning and really wanting to go to work or being excited about your job is just one of the best feelings.  A worse case scenario day of teaching cooking classes is still INFINITELY better than any really great day in my old job.  Hands down.

Now on to the reason for this note.  Phil I know you asked for a recipe back on Memorial weekend and Lesli, I got your voice mail last night seeking the same recipe.  Don't worry, you are not hurting my culinary feelings by requesting a recipe for Mac & Cheese.  I'm a girl with an entire drawer in her fridge that is devoted to cheese.  I can't walk into a store without scoping out the cheese counter seeking old favourites or better still, discovering some new yummy cheese that I hadn't previously known about.  I'm really pleased that Donald has decided that those boxed Mac & Cheese, even with, as you said, 'real cheese' probably aren't really all that good for you. 

Allow me to confess now;

*looks left*..*looks right*...said in a stage whisper...

'Even I break out the odd box of Annie's M&C occasionally, in fact ...*lowers voice* ...I've even eaten the frozen Stouffer's' *GASP*! Of course I doctor it up.  Annie's gets made with Fage greek yoghurt and Stouffer's gets sauteed onions and chorizo added, but still - it's all just glorified premade, sodium filled, dehydrated cheese or Velveeta (ain't nothing wrong with Velveeta) based, preservative filled convenience.

*cough*

Having now made that horrible confession I will now dispense with the Mac & Cheese recipe that I turn to when I really want the good stuff.  Mac & cheese really isn't hard to make at all, it just takes a little time.

First, you should have a nice shallow wide pan to cook it in so it gets a really wide area of the crusty topping bits.  My personal fave is the good old 9 X 11 pyrex.  It never fails me.

Second, choose the cheeses that you love.  Most times I fall on cheddar as a base, but I don't make it all cheddar because too much cheddar can make things oily and a bit stringy.  I have also used Colby for a touch of that 'authentic' yellow colour.  I've added blue cheese and creamy gorgonzola when the mood has struck.  Boursin is a nice creamy and flavourful addition.  Gruyere and/or Comte makes things all nice and stringy causing those delicious strands from plate to fork to mouth. Occasionally scraps of Gloucestershire or Cheshire might make their way in. bascially folks this is a cheese lovers free for all.

Third, the pasta.  Pick a shape that holds a good amount of cheesie goodness without offering too much in the way of pasta chewing.  Think elbows not bow ties.  Maybe ditalini if you want something little or penne if you want something big.  Stay away from those radiatore though, it makes your M&C more like jaw exercise than dining enjoyment.

Now basically in professional terms you are making a gratin based on a mother sauce of a roux with milk added which is a bechemel to which cheese is added making it a Mornay sauce (a small sauce of the bechemel) and topping it off with a gratin topping.
In layman's terms it means dumping a few things in a pan in a certain order and cooking some pasta.
pretty damn easy.

Now gather what you need first, this is called mise en place. Go ahead, just tell your other half that your going to mise en place now and see what kind of look you get.

You will need

1 stick of butter (plus a little extra for the dish)

5 or 6 slices of white bread, crusts removed like a good kid should and tear it up into 1/2 inch pieces or smaller if you like.  Don't measure it!  Just tear it up.

5 1/2 cups milk - This would be a good time to use whole milk or at the least 2% milk.  You want it to taste good right?

1/2 cup of flour

some salt - yea I said some salt.  You will need to salt your water for cooking the pasta. You will want some salt for seasoning, how much salt you want depends on the cheese you use and how salty you like your food.  I'm not going to dictate anybodys salt content.

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg.  Throw that damn spice box of grated nutmeg away, buy some whole nutmeg.  It keeps longer and tastes better.  Just grate it using a box grater on the fine edge or use a microplane (one of the world's greatest inventions). Nutmeg is always added to cream sauces.  Not because you want the sauce to taste like nutmeg, but because it enhances the flavour of the sauce.

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper - again, none of that tinned already ground stuff please.

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard.  Coleman's is quite nice.

6 - 7 cups of cheese keeping cheddar at about 2/3 to half the quantity of the cheese total.  If you are buying by weight and don't wish to grate all your cheese and then measure it in a little cup that would be about 25 - 28 ounces of cheese total.

1 pound of pasta

Now this makes a good family size batch of M&C enough for a whopping 3 quart casserole dish.  Cut it in half if you want.  No worries.  Heck, quarter it if you want.

Get the oven warming to 375.

Set large pot of water on the stove  and start it now for cooking the pasta.

Butter your dish.

Put your torn up bread in a bowl and pour 2 tablespoons of melted butter over it.  Stir it up.

Get a saucepan big enough to hold the milk, run water into the pan and pour it out (this helps to stop the milk from crusting on the bottom of the pan) and add the milk and warm it up.  Not boiling, not simmering, just take the chill off it.

In another pan that is big enough to hold all the milk, plus the cheese, put in the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter.  When the butter has melted add the flour and cook stirring 1 minute with a whisk.  Now you're making a roux.

Keep whisking, add the warmed milk in two or three additions, keep stirring.  Cook and keep whisking until it gets thick an bubbles.

Take the pan off the heat, add salt and nutmeg along with the ground pepper. Now add about 4 cups of the cheese and stir it in.

By now your pasta water should be boiling.  Salt it.  Well.  this is not the time for a pinch of salt.

Pour in the pasta, stir, cover, bring back to the boil.  Take the cover off and cook until the outside of the pasta is cooked.  The center will still be raw.  Remember it is going back in the oven for at least half an hour.  Following the pasta box instructions, stop about 5 minutes before they say you should.  Drain it and run cold water over it and drain.  This will slow the cooking down a bit.

Taste your sauce and be sure you like it.  Add more salt or pepper if you wish.  Heck, be brave and throw in some hot sauce or Worcestershire sauce.  I usually do.

Now add the pasta to the cheese sauce, stir well and dump it all in that gratin dish (the pyrex Lesli, the Pyrex).  Sprinkle the remainder of the cheesie goodness on top.  Sprinkle those buttery bread crumbs on and bung the whole thing into the oven.

Cook this for about 30 minutes or until it bubbles on the edges and looks nice and appealing through the little oven window.

Take it out and let it cool for a few minutes so you don't scorch the inside of your mouth and end up with that nasty piece of skin that.....oh never mind. 

Enjoy your M&C.

Pesto to light up your winter months

Here in New England seasons often change in the blink of an eye.  We had all been getting used to a lovely warm September, warmer than usual, and probably thinking that we would be basking in the glow of colourful sunsets and still wearing shorts and sandals until December.  Ah, the joys of global warming.  Alas, along came October. 
It started raining on the 1st and it hasn't stopped yet.  Along with the rain about the second or third day came the cold.  I had already started filling the greenhouse with my plants that live in its warmth all winter, the rosemary, my bonsai olive tree, jasmine, mandavilla, miniature pomegranate trees, bay tree, two blue plumbago, three pots of lemongrass, two cactus, a Castor bean, a Meyer lemon tree and a partridge.  Alright no partridge, but don't you think that would be cool?
I also had a basil plant that I had been nursing along all summer.  Pinching the ends to make it bushy, moving it occasionally to catch more sun.  I knew from past experience that if I just moved it into the greenhouse it would soon just drop all of its leaves and just become a dead twig in a pot.  I'm not sure why it does this, but I wasn't taking any chances this year. 
Sue had asked me recently if I had any recipes for pesto and this summer my Mom had called one day from Maine.  Our garden up there had produced an overabundance of basil and she needed to know how to make pesto.  She also planned on freezing some for later.  I wasn't too sure how that would work, but surprisingly if you aren't a stickler about color (it turns a bit blacker) it does work.  One could pull out a bit of summer from the freezer in February and here in New England that could be a real boost on those days when the sun is only available for what feels like 5 hours.
I really wouldn't call this a recipe per se because it really depends on a few factors that will vary every time you make it.

How strong is your basil?
There are dozens of different types of basil plants.  How it is grown, how old it is when it finally reaches you in a supermarket or Farmer's market, how it was been watered and fed, are all factors in the final taste of the herb.

How salty is your cheese?
I have found that Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano vary greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer.  Sure they all must be made from a certain region of Italy to be called by those names.  They also must follow traditional methods as well.  But the sheep and cow's eat different pastureland at different times of the year, the milks have to vary, how old it is when you buy it will mean that it could be drier and a bit more salty as a result.

How cheesy do YOU like your pesto? 
Taste, of course, is a personal thing so use this list of ingredients and technique as a guide to make your own.

Bavette Cacio e pepe or Linguini with 2 cheeses

I picked up the latest book by Amanda Hesser called 'Cooking for Mr. Latte'. If you've never read Amanda I'd like to suggest you run out, not walk, and buy this book. IT is that good.
I had already read her other book 'The cook and the Gardener' about her time spent living as a cook in France and her love/tolerate relationship with the cantancerous French peasant gardener Monsieur Milbert. In that book, each chapter covers a month and has recipes that relate specifically to what is fresh from the garden.
In Cooking for Mr. Latte, each chapter is a tale of an event in the year of the writer's life in dating and wooing Mr. Latte. The recipes for each of these events are at the end of the chapter. The sources for the recipes are diverse culled from her friends, her future Mother In Law, and her grandmother. The book is a comfortable ride through her life and her family and shows an undeniable love affair with food. Good food, fresh food, perfectly cooked food. The recipes in general highlight the best ingredients simply prepared.

For this recipe there are only a few ingredients, it is critical that they all be as good as you can afford and fresh. Don't buy the already grated cheese, buy a nice chunk and do it yourself. And when you get to the rind, save it in foil in a container in the fridge and add it to a soup later to add flavour. And as she says preceeding this recipe

'One is tempted to add more cheese, butter and oil to the recipe. Resist this impulse.'

This would be good with just a salad of bitter greens tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper and a bit of champagne vinegar or cider vinegar.

Bavette Cacio e pepe or Linguini with 2 cheeses

Sea Salt or Kosher
1/4 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese
1/4 cup finely grated pecorino-Romano cheese
1/2 pound of DeCecco linguini fini (or similar dried imported)
2 TBS unsalted butter, chilled (Buy Plugra or similar imported butter)
2 TBS extra virgin olive oil
1 TBS very course, freshly ground black pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Sprinkle in enough salt so that it tastes seasoned. Meanwhile, grate and mix the cheeses together. When the water boils, add the linguini and cook it for 6 minutes, stirring occasionallu. Near the end of cooking, scoop out about 1/2 cup of cooking water and reserve.

Drain the pasta and return it to the pot. Drop in the butter, oil and 1/2 TBS pepper and stir with tongs, lifting and folding the pasta together. Add about 1/4 cup of the pasta water to the pot and place it over medium-high heat. Cook for a minute, stirring to emulsify the sauce, add more of the reserved liquid if required. Test a noodle to see if it's done. It should still be firm in the center, though not as stiff as licorice. Remove from the heat and sprinkle half the cheese over the pasta. Blend once more and then divide the pasta among the plates passing the rest ofthe cheese and the pepper at the table.

Orzo salad

During the summer I like to make something on Sunday that I can bring to work with me for lunch during the week.  This has become a summer staple as it incorporates all of my favourite flavours, olives, feta, fresh garden tomatoes and good tuna.

This is a sort of Niciose salad with a few modifications.  You can mess with this to your hearts content adding and deleting things, but there is one thing you should not skip, the anchovies in the dressing.  This is key to how this salad tastes and trust me when I say it will NOT taste fishy if that is a flavour you are not so fond of.

1 cup orzo
1/2 pound green beans, cut diagonally into 1/2-inch pieces or hericot vert if you can find them

For dressing
1 TBS red-wine vinegar
1 TBS Sherry Vinegar
1 TBS fresh lemon juice
4 anchovies, chopped
1 TBS Dijon mustard
1 garlic clove, minced and mashed to a paste with 1/2 teaspoon salt
about 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil

6-ounce jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
6- to 7-ounce can tuna, drained (I use Ortiz in a jar, this is amazing tuna almost like a filet in a jar)
12 cherry tomatoes cut in half or left whole
1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh thyme leaves
1/3 cup Kalamata or other brine-cured black olives. cut in half
Chunk of Sheep's milk feta cheese (Sheep's milk feta like 'Valbresso' is soft and not as salty as regular cow's milk and other brined feta's)

In a saucepan of salted boiling water cook beans until crisp-tender, about 4 to 5 minutes. Drain beans plunge in cold water to stop them cooking further.  I usually scoop them out of the water so I can reuse it for the orzo. 

In a large saucepan of salted boiling water cook orzo until tender and drain in a colander. Rinse orzo well under cold water to stop the cooking process and drain well.  Put in a large bowl, add green beans.

Now make the dressing.  I have a small hand processor or you could use a blender.
In the processor or a blender add the vinegars, lemon juice, anchovies, mustard, and garlic paste.  The photo above is how you want your garlic to look before you add it.  With motor running add oil in a stream and blend until emulsified.

Now on top of the orzo add the artichoke hearts, olives, thyme, green beans, onion, cherry tomatoes, tuna and feta.  Drizzle all of the dressing over and mix.

I keep it in a big tupperwear in the fridge.  It tastes better if you let it come to room temperature before serving.

Johnnie's Balls**

**Sorry, I just had to title it that.  These are my cousin Johnnie's yummy meatballs and my gravy.

Gravy - Spagetti Sauce if you're not from Boston
3 - 28oz tins kitchen ready tomatoes
1/2 small tin of tomato paste or about 1/2 tube.
1 large onion, diced
4 - 5 cloves garlic minced fairly small
1 TBS dried basil
1/2 TBS dried thyme
1/2 TBS garlic powder
1 TSP salt
1 packet splenda (if avoiding sugar) or 1 TBS sugar
olive oil for pan
ground pepper
water/chicken stock/wine

In a heavy bottomed, non-reactive pot large enough to cook the gravy and later the added meatballs, saute the chopped onion in olive oil until it starts to soften and then add minced garlic, saute further until everyone is soft.  Don't brown.  When ready add the 3 tins of tomatoes.  I usually run a little water into each tin and swirl around to get all the bits and add this to the pot as well.
Then add basil, thyme, garlic powder (if using), salt, pepper, splenda or sugar. 
Stir well and bring this to a simmer, that is a few volcanos at a time, not a rolling boil.  Be careful as gravy and polenta are like napalm on your skin.  Leave the lid ajar to let out a bit of the evaporated moisture, but on enough to still be able to capture spatters.*  Cook for 1 hour, stirring frequently.  Add either chicken stock, wine or water to thin it out a bit maybe 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup and then cook 1 more hour.  You can shut it off and cool it at this point if you are going to use it later.

The balls

1.5 pds ground beef
2 eggs
3 - 4 TBS bread crumbs
3 TBS chopped fresh parsley
1 small onion diced fine
Lots of FRESH grated parmesan.  Approx 1/3 - 1/2 cup.**
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper to preferance

The key now is to not handle it to much, that will make your meatballs tough.  Squish everything together, fingers work best, until blended and no more.  Take a quantity of the mixture in your hand and roll around to make balls that are about 2 inches in diameter.
When all the balls are made, heat a heavy bottomed saute pan with either olive oil or render some chopped up pancetta.  Add meatballs in batches so they are not crowded and saute until lightly brown on all sides, not very long on each side.  As each one finishes, plop them in the gravy, this is where they will finish cooking.  (Johnnie on the other hand skips this step and puts them right in the sauce to cook, no browning. *8 I have found that I prefer this method as well.  The meatball absorbs the sauce taste and vice versa - very good.  I suggest trying this way at least once)
Simmer in gravy for an hour and check one to see how it looks.  Be careful when you stir so you don't break up the meatballs.

*Put a little plate on the counter with a piece of bread on it.  Use this to rest the spoon on after each stir of the gravy.  That is one yummy piece of bread by the time you are done!
** The quantity is vague because it really depends on how fine you grate your cheese.