Goat Cheese Meatballs (with Spaghetti)

Ingredients
Meatballs
Ground beef
Sour cream
Eggs
Bread crumbs
Goat cheese (crumbled)
Onion flakes
Garlic powder
Greek seasoning
Basil
Dried chopped onions
Salt
Spaghetti and Sauce
Everything from "Spaghetti with Meat Sauce" recipe, minus the ground beef.

I don't know if it's long tradition or just plain asshoishness that makes recipes for classic Italian foods so harshly debated and highly prized. Virtually everyone with an Italian last name has their great-grandmother's sauce recipe which, they claim, is better than a hummer from an Italian supermodel (pictured). In this respect, no food is more argued about than the simple, hard-working meatball. We're talking about a world of Italians ready to take a bat to anyone who would dare question their nonna's culinary expertise.
Yeah, well fuck that. My meatballs are firm yet melt in your mouth. Plus, they're all beef (no need for sausage or veal) which means you avoid having to make two pounds of balls every time you have the Italiano craving... and you will have this craving. Oh yes. My meatballs aren't even Italian; they're Greek, and you know what they say about Greeks: we're great cooks, great in the sack, and shitty with money. To add the pièce de résistance... goat cheese. Because goat cheese makes everything better. Suck it, Italy. Or, should I say, succhiare Italia.


A Word About Goat Cheese

Goat cheese has a taste similar to feta, though it's not as salty, since feta is brined. Other than being generally delicious, it has a few properties that make it great in meatballs. First, it doesn't really melt: it softens considerably but remains viscous enough that it won't get runny. This means your balls won't fall apart on you. It also really mellows out the acidity of the tomato sauce. Plus, it's non-dairy, so all you lactose intolerant folks can go hog wild.

Ladolemono Chicken Parmesan

Ingredients
Tomato sauce (2 small cans)
Tomato paste (1 can)
Pasta (penne or cut ziti will work)
Garlic
Basil
Chicken breast tenderloins
Feta cheese (crumbled)
Parmesan cheese (shredded)
Dijon mustard
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Lemon juice


This recipe was inspired by a post on the excellent food blog Potter's Kitchen for a quick, traditional Chicken Parmesan. I'd wager that if you asked the average American what their favorite Italian food is, chicken parm would be in the top 5. Its deliciousness lies in simplicity of concept: pasta, sauce, breaded chicken, cheese. It's so simple a concept, in fact, that it's just begging for some variation and substitution. But what variation? Well, I'm Greek and it's Italian... plus, around 100 BC, those motherfuckers stole our gods. It's time to pay the fiddler, bitch.

Now, we could just dredge some chicken in olive oil and call it Greek, but we have more cajones than that. My second favorite traditional Greek sauce (after tzatziki) is a simple lemon and olive oil sauce called ladolemono. It's used as everything from a marinade, to a dressing, to a dip for chicken, lamb, and seafood and it's really fucking delicious. We can make a simple Greekish tomato sauce with oregano and basil, and we'll give feta cheese a headlining role beside the parmesan (or parmigiano-reggiano if you buy the real stuff).
Foodies like to bandy about the word "deconstruction", which usually means spreading the ingredients out on a plate and making you assemble it yourself. A deconstructed PB&J would be a half a loaf of Ethiopian rye bread, a glob of peanut butter mixed with almonds and avocado smeared "artfully" on a plate, and a small German shoe filled with apricot and owl vomit jelly. It's not so much deconstructed as it is unnecessarily fucked with, and not usually for the better. This is more of a logical reengineering.