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Almondigas
Have one pound lean, tender, raw rump of beef, one pound tender loin of raw pork. Chop both very finely together with a cleaver. Hash very finely and add to the meat one bean sound garlic and one teaspoon chopped parsley. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Mix the whole well together for five minutes. Lightly flour a corner of the table. Divide the preparation into twelve equal parts; give them egg forms; gently roll in the flour and keep till required. Heat well in a frying pan one quart melted leaf lard, then lay the pieces in and fry for twelve minutes, turning over once in a while. Remove with a skimmer, lay on a towel to drain for ten minutes. Cut two medium-sized white onions and one green pepper into small square pieces; place in a sautoire with half ounce butter and nicely brown for eight minutes, stirring well with a wooden spoon meanwhile. Then add the balls, pour in two gills tomato sauce one gill demiglace; add two tablespoons green peas, two tablespoons sweet, Spanish red peppers cut in square pieces. Season with half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne pepper and half saltspoon Spanish saffron. Cover the pan and let boil for ten minutes. Then place the sautoire in the oven to bake for thirty minutes. Transfer into a hot dish and serve.
A professional-kitchen recipe written for a cook who already had stock pots and a quart of rendered lard on hand. The quantities are exact; the oven temperature and the yield are not.
- "One bean sound garlic"Read as one sound clove of garlic, finely chopped: a single clove, not a head. The odd wording probably reflects a translation from French, where a clove is a gousse (a pod).
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of tomato sauce is one cup and one gill of demi-glace is half a cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, which makes the saffron measure an eighth of a teaspoon — enough for colour and a thread of aroma.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thickened and glossy. A good reduced beef stock stands in; a cup of thin canned broth does not, and will leave the sauce watery after the bake.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan, wide and shallow, and in this case one that can go from burner to oven. Any heavy ovenproof skillet or braiser works.
- The ovenNo temperature is given, as was usual in recipes of this kind. For a covered pan of sauce, something in the region of a moderate oven (about 350F) is a reasonable modern reading, but it is an inference, not the book's instruction.
- Leaf lard by the quartA quart of melted lard is a shallow deep-fry rather than a true one, and frying fat in a professional kitchen would ordinarily have been strained and used again. At home, browning the floured balls in half an inch of lard or neutral oil achieves the same crust with far less waste.
- Total cooking timeTwelve minutes of frying, ten of boiling and thirty in the oven is a great deal for egg-sized balls of beef and pork with no bread or egg to hold moisture. Fry only until well coloured and expect a firm, thoroughly cooked meatball rather than a juicy one; a panade of soaked breadcrumb is the usual modern insurance.
- Sweet Spanish red peppersJarred piquillo or roasted pimiento, cut in squares. They are added for sweetness and colour late, not cooked down with the onion.
- YieldTwelve balls, serving four as a main course with rice or bread, six as part of a larger meal.
Almóndigas is a variant spelling of albóndigas, the Spanish word for meatballs, generally traced through Andalusian Arabic al-bunduqa, "the hazelnut" — a name for something small and round. Meatballs of this kind travelled from Moorish Spain across the Spanish-speaking world, and versions of the name turn up in Mexico, the Philippines and the Caribbean. What is striking here is how thoroughly the recipe has been put through a French professional kitchen before reaching the page: the meats are chopped by cleaver rather than ground, the balls are finished in a sautoire with demi-glace, and the seasoning is measured to the saltspoon. Saffron and sweet red peppers are doing the work of signalling Spain.