Hi there, my name is Jesse Miller and I write
novels. Today, however, I’d like to discuss how to make one of my favorite
meals, vegetarian meatballs!
One of the
things I particularly don’t like about vegetarian cooking is the desire to
create a vegetarian alternative which mimics the flavor and mouthfeel (Puking
forever! Such a disgusting word that mouthfeel!) of the meat version.
However, this one gets a pass with me; whether
in pasta or on a hoagie roll with sauce and cheese, this recipe is a house
favorite.
Lentils hold a special meaning for me in my creative
life. For years, I had a huge bag of
lentils on top of my computer screen as I worked on my novel ARK.
No pressure, but if you read the book, you’ll get why. Then one day, when I had finished the book, I
occurred to me that I should do something with the loitering lentils, which, as
you may imagine, took on a kind of Eucharistic vibe. Lentils have become a bit of staple in my
diet since.
The recipe below takes a while to prep—it’s a lot of
chopping and there’s some fiddling here and there, but it can be fun to cut up
vegetables if you can get a helper. You
might play some music, why not play some music together? Open a bottle of
Riojas, what? I often play sous chef in the kitchen, but
sometimes I’m the big baller/shot-caller, especially when I become the Nacho,
Nacho Man. Anyway, my wife found the
recipe somewhere at some point online, so wherever this came from, you
rock! I’m transcribing her handwriting
of the recipe card and appreciating what incredible handwriting she has as I
type this.
Lentil
Meatballs
Ingredients (so you can get your mise en place
on):
2 cups lentils
¼ cup + 2 tbsp olive oil
1 large lemon
(Hey! Maybe play Zooropa!!)
1 large onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced (We usually go bonkers for
garlic though)
1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
2 tsp salt
3 tbsp tomato paste
8 oz button mushrooms, sliced
3 large eggs
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
½ bread crumbs
¼ cup fresh parsley
¼ cup finely chopped walnuts (yeah, I know that
seems weird)
OK, here are the steps to success:
1. Cook
the lentils. Then drain and cool. My wife thinks it’s pretty obvious when the
lentils are cooked, so let that be your clock.
2. Sauté
the onions, carrots, celery, garlic, thyme and salt in ¼ cup olive oil in a
large frying pan for 10 minutes. Then
add the tomato paste and cook for 3 more minutes. Add mushrooms and then transfer to a wok (is
that right, let me check…ok, I’m being told that’s NOT correct); ok, scratch that wok transfer. How did screw that up? Hmmmm.
Ok, the idea here is to add the mushrooms and cook for another 15 minutes.
That handwriting thing from earlier is now suspect.
3. Cool
and add the cooked lentils.
4. Add
eggs, parmesan, bread crumbs, parsley, and walnuts. Mix by hand and put in the fridge for 25
mins.
5. Preheat
your oven to 400 F. Drizzle olive oil on
the pan.
6. Roll
the mixture in to golf ball-sized meatballs.
7. Roast
for 30 minutes, and boom! Baby, you got
a stew goin’! Or, at least some
versatile meatless meatballs. And really, since ARK is such a drinking book, complete with many cocktail recipes, it would be good to pair it with some
food! Cheers!
This is one of my favorite recipes. Maybe you have other vegetarian recipes to share?
ARK
Jesse Miller
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Common Deer Press
Date of Publication: May 15, 2018
ISBN: Hardcover ISBN: 978-988761-08-4
Paperback: ISBN: 978-1-988761-07-7
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-988761-09-1
Number of pages: 162
Word Count: 45k
Cover Artist: Ellie Sipila
Book Description:
Imagine the son of Cinderella and Noah. That's Alabaster Ash, professional window washer and amateur foot fetishist, thrall to his three physically fit, brutally aggressive stepsisters.
After polishing foot after foot of glass in the gingerbread city of Candyland and cleaning up after the “wicked stairmasters,” he haunts the bars and streets looking for love and appreciation -or a really nice pair of feet.
Like it or not, Alabaster finds himself reliving and reimagining his parents' lives as he roams from bar to bar, from thrill ride to stunt show in the linguistic funland that is ARK.
Excerpt:
Ground squirmed
past the windows, shuffling racks of bones and skulls under the soptoil as
clouds crept along the horizon. On the bus, all the windows let in cold air and
hung like a racked row of ice cubes in a tray, but I barely cracked the bottle.
Out I poured
when the doors opened, unable to feel my legs, unable to see the ocean, but I
could smell the salty marsh marching wet blue harridans, swiping and batting
the spit, pushing the blood and saltboxing up fatjuices into my sinuses.
Jammed a kwata
in the belly box and engaged the line.
–Hello?
–I’ve arrived.
I’m here.
–That’s great. I
bet a little walk will feel like a little slice of heaven, eh?
–I suppose.
–Well, I’ll
leave the light on for you, Buddy.
I slid on my
gloves and tried not to flinch at the sudden mustering of prickly discs
skipping to my face. I leaned in hard and clacked through town, blackened and
boarded and unblinking, barely wicklit. Smatter rooms to let. Ingrown hairs.
Offseason. Unseasoned in the savorless in and out drag of the tonguetide. I
dashed through a carless parking lot and into an astralamped glass meadow
jotting down quivering blue starlight ink- puddles into suckshifts of
snowhunchbanks humpbacking the outermost stretch of tideland. To the left, a
skit of cloven unguals stirred it seemed, crunchy, but I only got half an ear
worth and couldn’t noctoscop the goings-on of could be caribou or elk or deer
bowing their head, bowing their head before the almighty peering down hard and
in, like the retractable Polton and Crane lamp in the dentist’s office that
hangs my mouth open.
Inside the
blackness, the stickiting, ricketing pickets of thickets wiggle on their dicot
studs without me seeing, while they shot out the other side and stitched a
black curtain against the edge of the rest of the world. I clacked another mile
stretch as brine wafers tickled my ears and swizzled my nos- trils while
Lawrence Welk drift popping jollyjawdropping orbs uncorked across my field of
vichy.
Estrella’s was a
lighthouse, though not the vertical variety. But it glowed.
Light hung out
over the glass and flabbed fat, hotwhite dough out the sides as I took up her
street. This was another gingerbread house, hundreds of miles from home, though
this one in earshot of the beach. I rang and rang and rang and then just opened
the door.
About the Author:
Jesse Miller is the author of Unwrap Your Candy and the forthcoming ARK, both available from Common Deer Press. He is a Visiting Assistant Lecturer in English at the University of New England. He lives in the great city of Portland, Maine with his wife, two cats, and dog. Jesse roots for the Red Sox.
Website: https://www.jesseemiller.com/
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