Cookbook Challenge #16 - A16 Food+Wine

The Cookbook Challenge rides again!  The latest installment takes us to southern Italy by way of the San Francisco Bay area.  I made a dish from A16 Food+Wine by Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren.

Let's go to southern Italy!

A16 is a restaurant in San Francisco, named after the A16 highway that runs from Naples to Canosa, Puglia.  Appleman was the chef (but is no longer there), and Lindgren is the wine director.  From their website:

"True to our namesake, we gather our inspiration from southern Italy, particularly Campania, the region surrounding Naples. Chef David Taylor oversees the menu, which features fresh pasta, house-butchered and house-cured meats and authentic Neapolitan pizza. Complementing the rustic menu, Wine Director/owner Shelley Lindgren selects wines that highlight the indigenous grapes from Campania and nearby regions."

The book is quite unique and formatted very interestingly.  It's part encyclopedia of the wines of southern Italy, part glossary of specialty Italian ingredients, and the rest a collection of recipes from the restaurant.

In fact, the first 65 pages of the book are all about wine, with an in-depth discussion of the unique southern Italian grapes, along with recommended producers.  There is a lot of great information here, and it serves as an excellent resource for learning about the wines from this area.

The rest of the book is all about food.  Antipasti, pizza, soup, pasta, seafood, meats, veggies, and of course desserts, all from the restaurant.  Some fun looking recipes that are intended to be representative of the country cooking of southern Italy.

I chose to make the A16 recipe for "Monday Meatballs." 

I am a huge fan of meatballs in general, and I like making them, particularly to go along with spaghetti.  This recipe was prepared differently than any Italian-style meatball I have made.

While the seasonings are what you might expect with some oregano, parsley, fennel seeds, and red pepper (no garlic?!?), they add ricotta cheese as one of the wet ingredients.  To include some cured porky goodness, prosciutto is also added to the meat mixture.  And, all of the cooking takes place in the oven (which was great for a 91 degree day!).

After an initial sear in a hot oven, the temperature is reduced, and they are braised in a covered baking pan in a San Marzano tomato sauce.  The only can of authentic D.O.C.G. San Marzano tomatoes at my supermarket was $6.89 (gah!), so I went with "regular" canned plum tomatoes.  They might not have been kissed by the soils of Mount Vesuvius, but they were actually from Italy and were a third of the price, so at least give me some points for the effort.

So I baked and then braised the meatballs as directed.  Here is what they looked like coming out of the oven:

Meatballs!

These were perhaps the fluffiest, lightest meatballs I have ever made.  This is due, in part, to the liberal amount of bread used in the mixture, which helps to keeps them delicate.  Beefy and porky with lots of "Italian sausage flavors" - fennel, oregano, and crushed red pepper.  The seasoning is right on the money, and they are a little bit spicy.  Ricotta adds some moisture and creaminess.  Very nice.

I wasn't completely enamored with the sauce.  One thing that I might do differently is, instead of using fresh tomatoes, use an actual marinara sauce in the preparation.  Even after braising, the tomato sauce comes out very bright with almost an acidic note.  A prepared marinara cooked down with some garlic, onion, and basil would add a more rounded flavor with greater complexity, in my humble opinion.    

The A16 book serves these as a stand-alone dish, like so:   

A16's "Monday Meatballs"

 Nobody is going to be upset if I had mine with a little spaghetti, are they?

Sorry, but that's how I like it!

A16 is an enjoyable book, and I look forward to exploring it some more (particularly in the pizza chapter).  Uniquely structured, it offers fine insight into the wine of southern Italy, and there are some intriguing recipes from the restaurant, many which I look forward to trying.  Their meatballs are tasty.  Although, I'm still going to make my own sauce and add some garlic next time.