Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

Thai Curry Meatballs with Curry Sauce

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Thai curry meatballs with curry sauce is perfect for a quick and delicious midweek dinner. You can use just about any flavor of curry paste—red, green, yellow or Panang—and this dish will turn out great.

I suppose there are a number of different ways you can make something like these, so I just grabbed my favorite ingredients and mixed them up.

What you’ll need for the meatballs:

  • 1 lb ground pork or ground chicken*
  • 0.5 cup panko
  • 1 small shallot, minced
  • 2t garlic paste or 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1t ginger—grated works best, but powdered works in a pinch
  • 0.5t salt
  • 0.25t cayenne pepper
  • 1T chopped cilantro (I would have added if I had some on hand)

*If you use chicken, like I did here, make sure you cook the meatballs to 165 degrees to kill any dangerous bacteria. Also make sure to thoroughly wash everything that touches the raw chicken. When you read about people being sickened from cooking tainted chicken at home, it’s often because they didn’t follow these basic precautions.

What you’ll need for the curry sauce:

  • 1 shallot, minced
  • 1 to 2T of your favorite curry paste—I used Panang (also called Phanaeng) paste this time.
  • 1 14-oz can of good-quality coconut milk or coconut cream
  • 1-2t fish sauce
  • Asian-style fried shallots as an optional topping

What to do for the meatballs:

Heat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Oil a baking sheet with oil (not olive). Use plenty, because I was light with it, and some of the meatballs stuck.

Put all of the ingredients in a large bowl and combine. Using your hands works best, but make sure not to over mix. Over-mixing will make the meatballs tough, and so will compacting them too much when forming them.

When properly mixed, roll out about 1- to 2-inch balls and place them on the oiled baking sheet. Using nitrile gloves for this makes for easy cleanup.

Cook the meatballs for 15-20 minutes. They’re done when the center of the meatballs reach 165 degrees F with an instant read thermometer.

What to do for the curry sauce:

Heat a bit of high-heat oil in a medium-sauce pan and sauté the minced shallots over medium heat until softened.

When the shallots are done, take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a minute before adding the coconut cream/milk. Return to heat and bring to a low simmer. Do not let the coconut cream get to a boil, as it will break it.

When the coconut cream has begun to simmer, add the curry paste and stir well until the paste dissolves into the cream. Add the fish sauce and let the mixture simmer until it thickens to your preference.

When the meatballs are done, put them in a serving dish and pour the curry sauce over them. Sprinkling fried shallots over the top makes a nice garnish.

Serve hot with rice or fried noodles.

Tate’s-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Chocolate chip cookies may seem a little trite and boring, but these put all other chocolate chip cookies to shame. In fact, if for some weird reason you need to impress friends with your baking skills, do it with these. They’re that good. Bring these to the office, and you’ll be a hero.

The difference with these from other CC cookies is that they’re thin and crispy, as opposed to thick and gooey. But there’s also a secret to these that the folks at Serious Eats discovered with this recipe: the use of light brown sugar and raw cane sugar in the recipe. This gives the cookie a hint of butterscotch flavor, making them notably delicious.

The recipe below is pretty much what Serious Eats offers, with some minor edits.

What you’ll need:

  • 8 oz. low-protein all-purpose flour, such as Gold Medal blue label
  • 8 oz. light brown sugar
  • 3.5 oz. raw cane sugar
  • 2t kosher salt; if using table salt, use about half as much by volume
  • 1.5t baking soda
  • 8 oz. cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch chunks
  • 8 oz. assorted chocolate chips, preferably no darker than 70%–use the best quality chips you can find
  • 1 large egg, straight from the fridge, well beaten
  • 1T, yes Tablespoon, vanilla extract

What to do:

Make sure your oven rack is in the middle slot in the oven and heat the oven to 350°F.

While the oven’s heating combine the flour, light brown sugar, raw cane sugar, salt and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor. Process until combined.

Add the cold butter and pulse to form a dry and powdery mix; comparable results cannot be produced by hand or with a stand mixer. Add the chocolate chips and pulse once or twice to combine. At this point, the mixture can be refrigerated up to one week in an airtight container or used immediately.

Transfer the mixed ingredients to a large bowl and add the egg and vanilla, stirring it well. Now the mixture may seem too crumbly and dry, but it’s not. Once the wet ingredients have been absorbed, knead the mixture by hand until it comes together like regular cookie dough.

Divide the dough into 50 or so portions with a 1-tablespoon scoop. I used a melon baller. After you’ve divided them into portions, at that point they can be refrigerated in a sealed bag for a week or frozen for three months for baking later. Let them warm to about 70 degrees before baking, though.

Now it’s time to get baking. Arrange the dough balls on a parchment-lined half-sheet pan (do not use a silicone mat), leaving at least 2 or 3 inches between cookies. These things really spread out when cooking; you’ll be surprised.

Bake until thin and golden brown, with an even color from edge to center, about 16 minutes. When they’re done, let the cookies cool on the baking sheet until they’re at room temperature. They need to cool to crisp up. They’re actually really floppy when they come out of the oven.

These cookies will keep at least six weeks in an airtight container, but it seems impossible that they would last that long, unless you’re a cookie monk or something.

Pizza Potsticker Chaos

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With pizza fried-rice being somewhat of a failure, I decided to blend pizza with yet another Asian food: potstickers. I ended up with two different concoctions, and I’m not sure what to call either of them. Pizza Potstickers? Pizza Pockets? Pizza Pouches? I can tell you that neither outcome was what I intended, but they were each pretty good in their own way.

Let’s start with the first ones, which turned out—as intended—to be more like gyoza or potstickers. My original plan was to just make potstickers with Italian sausage, a bit of pizza sauce and some cheese. Pretty simple. I was tripped up, however, when I precooked the meat.

Traditional potstickers are assembled with raw meat, but I have undercooked-pork paranoia, so I didn’t want to use raw sausage (I’m always worried that the raw pork is not going to cook through during the regular gyoza cooking process. Irrational, I know, but what can you do?) And there lies the problem, cooked pork doesn’t squish down during the potsticker assembly, so a person with limited patience like me would have a hard time making the potsticker in it’s traditional shape. There was an easy fix, though, just use two full potsticker skins and make flying-saucer-shaped potstickers. These actually were actually pretty good.

With those being good, but not turning out exactly as intended, I went in the crispy direction, with the whatever-you-want-to-call-thems cooked in a muffin pan. Same ingredients as the faux potstickers, but they had a far different outcome. Again, they were actually pretty good. Next time, though I’d fill them a bit more with toppings.

What you’ll need (for both appetizers)

  • Potsticker skins
  • Italian sausage, cooked
  • Pizza or marinara sauce
  • Shredded mozzarella cheese (I used a blend of Asiago, mozzarella and Romano)
  • Olive-oil cooking spray

What to do for the two-skin pizza potsticker flying-saucers:

Lay a potsticker skin flat and add your toppings to the center.

Ready for the top layer.

Wet the perimeter of the first potsticker skin and place the second skin over it. Seal the skins together by pressing fork tines into the edge of the skins, going around the entire circumference.

Put some oil in a fry pan over medium heat. Add the potstickers and cook until they begin to crisp up. Add 0.33 cups water to the pan and immediately cover. Let them cook for a bit, and turn them over if you wish. They’re done when the water has evaporated and the undersides are crispy.

Serve with warm pizza or marinara sauce for dipping.

What to do for the crispy-skin version:

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Stuff a potsticker skin into each indentation, as seen in the photos. When the oven has reached 350, cook the skins in it. I do not have a specific time for you, but I did check the skins every few minutes, and took them out when they just started to brown. At that point, they are dry and crispy.

Potsticker skin cooked to crispiness.

Add your pizza sauce, sausage and cheese—in that order—and put back in the oven until the cheese has melted.

Ready for the oven. Once the cheese has melted, they’re ready.

Serve hot.