Kottsbulla Recipe

NAME: _Kottsbulla Recipe

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INGREDIENTS/UTENSILS:
500g beef mince
500g pork mince
2 cups breadcrumbs
250mL thickened cream
1 small nutmeg
1 medium onion
salt
2 tbsp flour
100g butter
3 cups chicken stock or 3 cups water and three chicken stock cubes

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METHOD:
Pretty standard - mix the breadcrumbs with about 1/5th of the cream so that the cream moistens the breadcrumbs, set aside while you grate as much of the nutmeg as will fill a teaspoon. (Should make about a slightly heaped teaspoon or a smidgen more.) Peel the onion and chop to almost minced consistency. Add the two meats, the nutmeg, the minced onion, and around a teaspoon of salt to the breadcrumbs and spoon mix or hand mix until the mixture coheres properly, around five minutes. Try not to let the mixture warm too much as you do it. At this stage you can refrigerate the meat for half an hour or more.

Divide the mixture into four balls, and each ball into about sixteen portions, which you then form into balls roughly the size of a walnut. You should get around 64 meatballs.

Start with around half the butter in a frying pan, and do the meatballs in batches of sixteen, frying until they just get to dark brown. Keep the temperature medium to prevent burning the butter black, and work the batches, adding the remaining butter as needed.

When the meatballs are done, reduce the temperature a bit more, stir in the flour and let it brown a bit, then slowly add the chicken stock, (or water and crumbled chicken stock cubes) stirring as you go to loosen pan dark bits, keep adding the water until desired consistency is reached. Remember the sauce will thicken until all the flour has been cooked. Add the remaining cream, then put the meatballs back in to warm through again.

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SERVING:
This serves four to six people. Serve with mashed potatoes, a fruit sauce and pickles if desired.

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NOTES:
I generally remove 2/3 of the sauce, and put 2/3 of the meatballs aside at this stage, because there's just too many for two people. The extras will freeze quite well in a ziploc bag or a container, with the sauce included in a separate ziploc bag, and makes two more meals.

Fruit sauce - traditionally lingonberry but I make a sauce with plum jam, pinch of salt, half a lemon's juice, extra water and a smidgen of flour when I forget to go to Ikea to get a jar of the lingonberry...

Free thought of the day:
I thought "kottsbulla" may have derived from the word "bulla" that has to mean balls, right? and "kott" which sounded suspiciously close to the Austrian word for cat. But in actual fact "kott" means meat and "bullar" is a word for buns... Oy, am I ever embarrassed!

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ENJOY!