This was a big recipe to tackle as my first one, but having sampled this before, I knew the finished product was going to be a good one, which helped keep me motivated. But let me help set the scene for how my first cooking resolution went down.

Picture me starving at 7:15pm heading home with no groceries in my apartment. I went to the local (not cheap) grocery store, armed with the photos on my phone of this recipe and the next one. I wandered through the aisles gathering everything on this list, double-checking the sizes with the recipe. I bought all of the ingredients except one for the next recipe (not a critical ingredient), and headed back to my apartment.

Fast forward to 7:45, I turn on the oven and start digging through the recipe and realize a few things: 1) I did not have tinfoil which will make cleanup more annoying, and 2) I bought HALF the amount of turkey (the main ingredient), which means I was going to have to do math in my head throughout the brand new recipe.

Looking back on this whole first day, it made me realize I need to double check the supplies needs for each recipe as well as the ingredients list, and that assuming I will have time to pick up ingredients on a weeknight without being cranky about it is not the best approach. If I’m going to stick with this, I’ll need to do more preparation in advance so I am able to stay focused on getting the food IN MY BELLY.

Ok, onto the good stuff!

TURKEY AND RICOTTA MEATBALLS

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients include the obvious, plus basil, parsley, parmesan cheese, whole peeled tomatoes, and garlic. I also picked up Angel Hair for eating. Basic rating: Easy to find, things I already like.

First item in the recipe was my least favorite alone and already hungry: Hand crushing the whole peeled tomatoes. It ended up getting all over my shirt no matter what I did, which meant I ended up changing outfits. Julia’s recommendation was to give this task to someone to help out with, and honestly I think it would have been more fun to have tomato juice squirting everywhere with someone else to laugh with. Me by myself getting tomato juice on my PJ shirt was not that fun.

Next thing was to add this to a pot with sliced garlic and olive oil and voila! A sauce is made! This sits for almost the rest of the recipe with minimal attention needed.

Something I also didn’t do well: Finely chop the herbs. I cheated and tried to use the same knife to slice the garlic and chop the herbs, and I really needed to commit to a bigger, sharper knife for the herb preparation. The finer the chop on the herbs, the easier the meatball making, and the less leafy the final product would have been.

Once the herbs were chopped, I added minced garlic, ricotta, parmesan cheese, and salt, and I got ready to mix.

Mixing was fun, I gotta admit. And getting them into golf-ball-sized portions was not a difficult task. In the full portion of the recipe, the number of meatballs might fill the whole pan, but in my case (half the recipe) I had plenty of room to let them spread out.

At this point, my sauce was done, so I turned it off while the meatballs cooked. That way, I wouldn’t over reduce the sauce before the meatballs were finished. Given the timing of each of these recipe pieces, I think this would be a great meal for a group. There are multiple possible stopping points, and it makes a large quantity of meatballs.

Because I was cooking this to eat immediately, I put on the pasta water to boil while the meatballs were in the oven.

Everything after that was about assembly! Put the meatballs in the sauce, finish cooking the pasta, and then put everything on the plate. In the end, this recipe was pretty easy and will probably be a good one to break out when company comes.

I did most of this cooking in the apartment by myself, and by the time I was assembling, my boyfriend (N) came home and was able to eat dinner with me. While he did not experience much of the process here, his review is similar to mine in the end.

N: Overall, pretty solid. I give it a 3.7 out of 3.8.

I had this for lunch today, and I am happy to report that leftovers heat up really well and make for excellent work-friendly lunch food.

Basic overview: YUM.