Swedish Meatballs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We had purchased the IKEA version of meatballs when buying a table and armchair there, in south Edmonton, the acquisition of the Swedish meatballs having been prompted in part by anecdotes that emananted from family connections in Montreal about the wondrous gustatory lust one develops for these little globes of Scandinavian beef.
Potatoes (Photo credit: Marj Joly)
Not so. They are rather bland; worse, they are not even near the rather good pseudo-Swedish meatballs Loblaws purveys, and certainly a distant haul from any Dutch meatball my mother deep-fried in the deep black cauldron pan brought over from Leiden sixty years ago.
There’s a partial solution. It requires reliance upon the Polish food industry and Canadian farmers.
Boil, without salt or oil, three medium red potatoes, cut into eighths, to somewhat, but not too much, less than firm. Dress potatoes with Polish vegetable salad (salatka warzywyna). Crush one under-priced American Haas avocado and mix it with Polish sweet letcho (pepper based: leczo papryknowe); place on table; in a shallow bowl, to add to potatoes.
Take twenty meatballs, and nuke. To dip meatballs in, place on table a small bowl of hot Polish mustard: musztarda “dobra tesciowa.”
Serve with Chopin mazurkas. Rubinstein is particularly fine. Catalan red wine goes well. Reputations will be preserved and palates will be appreciative.
