I’m going to be rather poor in a few weeks time. The PhD funding’s run out and tutorial students seem thin on the ground at the moment.

To partially remedy this, I have decided that I will continue to do what I have been doing for the last few days. That is cooking for my friends and myself in return for them buying the ingredients and some wine.

I think it is a good idea. I get free food. They eat something that isn’t pot noodle. Bulk cooking makes things cheaper. It would make sense to try and convince them that is a great idea by cooking something they like that I know I can do well.

Unfortunately I don’t do things that make sense. Instead, on Tuesday, I decided I was going to make a dish that I hadn’t cooked before. Worse than that it was a dish I have never EATEN before, and neither had they. So there I was making swedish meatballs, a dish with an unknown flavour to us, in a return to 1960s culinary fashion to try and impress some people who were born in the late 80s. I must be an idiot. 

I had read several recipes for swedish meatballs and seen a lot of variation. Generally the meat is a mixture of pork and beef and has ‘warm’ spices for flavouring. Often breadcrumbs soaked in milk are mixed into the meat. They are either served with gravy or a cream sauce, boiled potatoes and lingonberry. For some reason this dish was super-popular in Britain and America in the 60s and 70s but is not so common now.

I decided I would opt for pure beef meatballs (beef mince was going cheap at Tesco) flavoured with allspice, cinnamon and mace and served with a sour cream and dill sauce on pasta. Potatoes didn’t appeal to me that day and I had no idea of how to get hold of lingonberry!

Luckily for me, the reaction to the meal was one of positive suprise. Goon said “these don’t taste like meatballs.” But he liked them anyway. MJ ate some even though she’d already had dinner so I think that must be an endorsement. Personally, I thought they were good but could have done with something… ……ginger maybe. Is that too strange? 

Anyway, we had the meatballs with a side salad. It appears that it is difficult to make goon eat salad so MJ had a go at the “here comes the aeroplane” trick that works on most three year olds.

Apparently goon bit her finger.

Here’s the swedish meatball recipe.