Ground Veal - Stuffed Peppers

To kick off this Year of Meat, the first dish I prepared was an "old stand-by", my Grandma's Spaghetti and Meatballs.  It was a dish, that because my now near 97 year old grandmother never measures anything, took me several iterations to feel good about the result.  And now, it is a staple in the King household.  This blog is about meat, obviously.  So, I never did write about the Eggplant Parmigiana that I made last month.  But similar to my attempt with the Spaghetti and Meatballs, I interviewed my grandmother for the steps, the ingredients, the rough estimates of each ingredient, etc.  When did I perform the interview?  Last month.  Where did I perform it?  At my grandmother's house.  Why then?  Because it was the same day that while my wife and I were flying from Chicago to Boston, renting a car and driving 3 hours to western Massachusetts to visit her, my grandmother was making her homemade Eggplant Parmigiana and Stuffed Peppers.  And the food was absolutely amazing.  And since I am the only family member to have taken the time to "reverse engineer" her homemade spaghetti sauce and meatballs, I thought I ought to do the same for those two dishes.  And as I already mentioned, Eggplant Parmigiana is on the list.  And after tonight, so are the Stuffed Peppers.  Now, my grandmother made hers that night with Ground Beef.  But since I still had Ground Veal left in the Year of Meat, Ground Veal it was.  I did call Grandma to confirm that it would be an appropriate substitute.  She applauded the idea, and thus, I was off and running.

I bought the ground veal from my beloved Paulina Meat Market, put it in a bowl with diced onions and celery, dried basil and parsley, along with salt, pepper, an egg, some fresh Italian bread crumbs, garlic and cooked rice.  All of those ingredients were Grandma-approved, but the ratios and volumes were pretty much up for me to decide.  I hand mixed it all together, stuffed the filling into red and green pepper halves (internal seeds and stuff removed), poured a can of diced tomatoes over it all, covered it in foil, and baked at 325 for 90 minutes.

Much like the spaghetti and meatballs endeavor, there are things I will change.  I will use more salt, add some parmigiana cheese, and replace the diced tomatoes with the homemade pasta sauce.  I'll try Ground Beef and re-try Ground Veal, and I'll find the ultimate version.  That said, if I redid them exactly the same way next time, I'd be thrilled.

I've been counting down these cuts all year now.  And I'll keep doing it.  But in addition to the "big countdown" towards completing all 61 cuts, I now have only 1 veal cut left to go.  The end is drawing near.  And it saddens me greatly!

50 down, 11 to go!