Preheat the oven to 450°F.
For the sauce: In a small saucepan, add the pomegranate juice, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Simmer over medium-high heat, reducing the juice to roughly 1 cup. This should take about 20 minutes. When reduced, set the sauce aside.
For the meatballs: Grease the bottom and sides of an 8 × 8-inch baking pan with olive oil and set aside.
Place the ground lamb in a large bowl and add the onion, eggs, crackers, garlic, rosemary, lemon juice, fennel seed, salt, and pepper. Using your hands, mix thoroughly.
Form the meatballs into 1½- to 2-inch balls. Place them in the pan.
Roast the meatballs in the oven for 5 minutes. Remove them and brush on two coats of the pomegranate sauce. Return the meatballs to the oven and roast for an additional 15 minutes, or until they are sizzling and well browned.
Remove the meatballs and let them cool. Before serving, drizzle with the remaining pomegranate sauce and sprinkle with the pomegranate arils.
If making a day in advance, let the meatballs cool completely, then cover and refrigerate. Reheat the meatballs at 350°F and apply the arils as a final touch.
If there are leftovers, the arils can be combined with the meatballs and refrigerated as one dish.
Nigella’s Fusilli with Toasted Pine Nuts and Feta
SERVES 12
I first tried this pasta from Nigella Lawson’s
Nigella Kitchen
(Hyperion, 2010) for purely superficial reasons. Nigella has great style, and she is my kind of woman, a real vixen. So if she revered an earthy pasta with spinach and pine nuts, then surely I would, too. And I did! But watch out: this is the kind of dish you can really gorge on. Once I saw how roasty and fragrant the pine nuts were toasted, I got into the habit of toasting all my nuts, which, drizzled with a little olive oil and some sea salt, are a delicious, warm snack or party food on its own
.
Salt
½ cup pine nuts
4 teaspoons olive oil
2 yellow onions, sliced
2 pounds frozen chopped spinach
4 garlic cloves, finely minced
2 pounds fusilli or penne pasta
16 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
8 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
In a large pot, boil the water for the pasta. Once it comes to a boil, add a fistful of salt to the water.
Toast the pine nuts in a small, dry skillet over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes. Be careful because they will burn easily. Put the toasted nuts in a bowl and set aside to cool.
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Sauté the onions, letting them soften without taking on any color, about 10 minutes.
Give the bag of spinach a few good whacks to break up the pieces. Add the garlic and spinach to the pan. Keep stirring, breaking up any more large chunks of spinach and allowing it to melt.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the package’s instructions. When finished, reserve a cup of the pasta water before you drain the pasta.
Add the feta, toasted pine nuts, and some of the pasta water to the spinach mixture, allowing the feta to melt a bit. The sauce will be a bit chunky with the feta. Add the pasta and Parmesan to the sauce, and more pasta water if the sauce seems dry, tossing everything well to combine.
Spoon the pasta into bowls and serve with extra Parmesan at the table, if desired.
Luscious Chocolate Clusters
MAKES 24 CLUSTERS
I have never met a cluster that I wasn’t madly, passionately in love with. I’ll eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert. These rich, rocky mounds of chocolate bliss originated with my great-great-aunt Edith Pava, whose son, Thurman Pava, became a chocolatier and founded Rosa’s Fudge in Massachusetts, now sold all over the country!
One 12-ounce bag semisweet chocolate chips
1½ cups raisins
1½ cups walnuts, roughly chopped
Line a cookie sheet with wax paper.
Melt all the chocolate chips in a double boiler. If you don’t have a double boiler, fill a small saucepan with water and bring it to a boil. Reduce it to a simmer and set a heatproof bowl on top of the pot. Proceed with melting the chocolate, stirring frequently, until smooth. Remove from the heat.
While the chocolate is still warm, incorporate the raisins and walnuts.
Take a heaping tablespoon of the chocolate mixture and spoon onto the cookie sheet, leaving 1 inch between the clusters (they’ll spread).
Refrigerate for 1 hour or until set. Gently remove the clusters from the cookie sheet and transfer to a plastic bag or tin. Refrigerate until serving.
Filthy Fizz
SERVES 2
This is such an easy, elegant cocktail, and it seems to have an aphrodisiac effect, too. Prepare your inner siren
.
Prosecco, chilled
Campari, room temperature
Raspberries, optional
Fill two champagne flutes halfway with Prosecco. Finish them off with a splash or two of Campari. Float a raspberry in each glass for extra style. Let loose, drink up, and have fun.
12
.
Market Fresh
N
o matter how hard I try, after a few months together, my chemistry with Benjy is just not there. In fact, the decrescendo is happening rapidly. We’re starting to distinctly annoy each other, or so it seems, and I feel it’s time to cut our losses before anyone gets too hurt. So just before Valentine’s Day, I ask Benito Bagel to join me at the dive bar where we had our first date.
I try to make the breakup as quick and painless as possible, telling myself that he’s just as likely to be done with me. But because I’m nervous, and because I truly respect him, I get myself too worked up and my delivery is off.
“I’m thinking this has gone as far as it can go,” I start off, sounding nasty and coldhearted straight out of the gate, instead of tender but direct, which was my intention.
When he looks at me with sheer shock, I dig myself into a deeper hole.
“You know, I’m letting you off the hook. We can just be, like, over.”
He abruptly stands up, looking horrified and extremely offended, raising his right hand like a first grader who needs the bathroom, and says, “I would like to go now, please.” Before
I can begin to redeem myself, change lanes, actually behave like a compassionate human being, he leaves me stranded in the corner booth sooner than our Blue Moons can arrive. I end up drinking both beers and never hear from him again.
I suppose I thought we both saw the same subtext of our relationship: it wasn’t true love—or even trudging in that direction—at least not for me, and perhaps naïvely, I assumed not for him. Looking back, I did drag him along while I tried to rebuild, but at the time I thought I was just giving dating another shot. I’ll always be grateful for my sweet stint with Benjy. What I learned from our short time together was how nice it feels to be with someone who is simply kind, honest, and dependable.