The unusually hot Florida sun on this January afternoon has passed high overhead, beginning its downward arc, and I have quite possibly just made the best meatball of my life!  Little spheres of garlicky goodness, fried in my favorite skillet to ensure a nice, brown outer crust, and a moist sirloiny center.  Handfuls of fresh oregano, basil, and grated Locatelli cheese binding the deliciousness with Progresso breadcrumbs.  Today however, the culinary stars were aligned and the meatballs emerged from their heated dance in the heavy, black skillet transformed into nuggets of Italian nobility. The dizzying stampede of the past week’s activities now slowed, and Monday’s arrival eminent, held at bay just long enough to prepare Sunday dinner, and once again find solace in the way things ought to be.

The high point of my day is the monumental decision of what to prepare for dinner.  So many choices.  Usually upon hearing that I enjoyed a lengthy first career as an Executive Chef, the inevitable question is asked, “What is your favorite thing to cook? I get that all the time.  It’s impossible to answer, because I like most everything, with the exception of liver and lima beans, which by the way, my mother used as the tortuous tools of her impersonation of Joan Crawford in the movie “Mommy Dearest”.  Sad because I was a really good eater as a child, and liver became the symbol of power and control in our household.  I can remember the dread I felt when I came home from grammar school and upon opening the refrigerator for a quick snack before heading out to play, my eyes would catch a glimpse of the brown butcher paper neatly folded and wrapped. I knew that meant only on thing…liver!  The fear and loathing would grip me as I understood a test of wills would play out as evening approached, and the kids were beckoned with the normally beloved call, “dinner’s ready, come on in and get washed up”.  Not on liver night. Should I just make a break for it, start running and never look back, and find some family that found organ meat to be unpalatable, no matter how much bacon and onions you smothered it with?  The scene played out just like the aforementioned movie, with me sitting at the dinner table on a school night until 8:30, with a now cold and shriveled piece of the glandular organ looking even more morose than when the line was drawn in the sand hours earlier. My oldest brother, Bruce, and I hated liver.  The other two kids didn’t seem to mind it.  Adding to my queasiness was the sight of Bruce ingesting the tiniest morsel he could get away with, and promptly dry heaving, and retching much the way the contestants do on some reality TV show when they’re required to eat live mealy worms the size of a peanut, to secure their shot at millions. And so it would go on liver night in the Grant household.

The evening meal was always called dinner, we never called it supper, for that was far too pedestrian for my Princeton educated father.  The difference between supper and dinner wee more than semantics to him.  God forbid.  My father would lower his nose from high in the air just low enough to smell the aromas of our dinner cooking.  There was an unspoken disdain for the unfortunate family down the street who came running when the call to supper sounded.  Who cares what the meal is called, aren’t we just thankful to have food on the table?  That reasoned approach was not conveyed to us kids. I guess they never served supper at the dining club my father belonged to as a Princeton undergrad in 1935.

Today’s supper consists of those beyond delicious meatballs, and a simple vegetable of oven roasted cauliflower florets with cracked black pepper, and a little drizzle of good green olive oil.  Divine in it’s simplicity, bold in flavor, not too composed.  Hearty, lowbrow eats. At the risk of culinary blasphemy, I have decided to serve the “polpette di carne”, Italian for meatballs, naked in their saucelessness, with just a vegetable.  Decidedly more Swedish than Italian this evening I suppose. The Sicilian preference would be to fry the meatballs in the bottom of a large pot and simmer them in the gravy.  Mom always called it marinara sauce, and she would cook the meatballs and sweet Italian sausage, and let all of that luscious meat flavor infuse itself into the sauce.  I was in college before I hear a friend refer to tomato sauce as “gravy”.  Herein lies the debate, meatballs cooked in the sauce or out? There are several raging conflicts that have entered my stream of consciousness.  Yankee vs. RedSox?  Thanksgiving stuffing cooked in the bird or out?  Which clam chowder do you prefer – red Manhattan style, or New England, thick and hearty like the New Englanders it represents?  Now too, the meatball debate is floating down the same stream of culinary opinion.  So which is it?  Answer carefully because all of western culinary civilization hinges on your reply.  It’s quite a compelling question actually.   My marginally Italian partner wants her meatballs dry, no tomato sauce.  She doesn’t even want them cooked in a bubbling bath of Tuttorosso tomatoes and Contadina tomato paste.  Simmering the meatballs and sausage in the sauce allows the savory fennel flavored juices to have their way with the tomatoes, and when that oil slick of flavor rises to the tip of the pot and simmers gently for a couple of Sunday afternoon hours, culinary heaven has come upon us.

The sun has now completed its downward arc, and sunk into the horizon.  As the hush of Sunday draws to a close, the dinner dishes are clean and back in their resting place.  Preparing a simple dinner has transformed me, and I have quite possibly just eaten the best meatball of my life!