1 16oz. can cooked cannelini beans
1/3 C. Italian-style breadcrumbs
1 C. cooked barley (or rice would probably do as well)*
1/4 C. oatmeal**
1 egg
1/2 of a tomato, chopped
2-3 TB. of chopped onion
2-3 TB. Parmesan cheese + some for topping (if you prefer)
pepper and garlic powder to taste
cooking oil
spaghetti sauce
Process the cannelini beans in a food processor until they are coarsely chopped. Combine them in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients (except for the cooking oil and spaghetti sauce). Add more oatmeal or breadcrumbs if necessary until the mixture is about like a meatloaf would be in consistency. (Ergo, cohesive but somewhat loose.) Preheat the oven to 400F. Put the cooking oil in a thin layer on the bottom of a glass baking dish. One at a time, and with wet hands, form meatballs out of the bean mixture.*** Place them in the baking dish so that they don't touch each other. Put the dish in the oven and bake them for 30-45 minutes, or until hot and fairly firm. Remove them from the oven and pour a little spaghetti sauce over each meatball. (I refuse to call it a beanball.) Return them to the oven and bake about 5 more minutes. Put your meatballs on a serving platter or dish. Top them with spaghetti sauce and Parmesan cheese like you would a regular meatball. Heck, if you feel extra crafty cook some pasta and serve them all in with that.
________
*Yes, I used leftover barley. Grandmom raised me well. As further proof, I also used the beans, tomato, and onion from an unsatisfactory batch of Bean & Pasta Soup I made earlier this week without the benefit of chicken stock. (Not intentionally-- I forgot I had bought seafood stock for the Loco Moco and didn't want to try that in my Bean & Pasta Soup, so used plain water as the base. Yes, ugh.) The pasta part of the soup is now sitting in my freezer, from whence came the barley. Love me, love my leftovers.
**You could dispense with the barley and rice and only use an equivalent amount of oatmeal if you wanted, although the barley gave the meatballs a nice bite. I used the barley because a) I thought I could, b) FINISH FINISH NO THROW AWAY! and c) when I was making my grocery list I didn't include oatmeal because I knew I had some instant in the cabinet...instant maple-brown sugar flavored! So basically what happened was this: I dumped the whole packet in, casually read the side of the paper as I was about to throw it away, and then hurriedly dumped out as much of the instant oatmeal as I could. I then defrosted the barley. Before I overcompensated with pepper they were some pretty maple syrup-flavored meatballs.
***This basically looks like you're playing a very slow and solemn game of "hot potato" with the vegetarian meatball. And yes, the wet hands do really make it easier. It has the same result as when you flour your hands before handling pastry or oil your hands before handling candy. What this says about my vegetarian meatballs, I don't know.
Grandmom and I once had a shouting match over the tv. Grandmom likes Romantic Comedies. I do not, but hey, my choices were: sit in another room from the person I came to visit or watch a Romantic Comedy with her. It happened to be "The Wedding Planner", starring J. Lo as The Lovelorn Underappreciated Career Woman Looking for Love and Matthew Mcconaughey as The Antihero Who Supposedly Wins the Audience with His Bad Boy Charm. Long story short, by the end of the movie I was shouting at the tv like it was the superbowl for J.Lo's character to go with the nice Italian boy who came all the way from Italy to meet her, and my mild, gentle Grandmom was shouting right back, "BUT SHE DOESN'T LOVE HIM!!!!" Only in an Italian household would two women watching a Romantic Comedy on a couch in front of the tv become loud. We may or may not have had ice cream afterwards. Ice cream heals all wounds.
1/3 C. Italian-style breadcrumbs
1 C. cooked barley (or rice would probably do as well)*
1/4 C. oatmeal**
1 egg
1/2 of a tomato, chopped
2-3 TB. of chopped onion
2-3 TB. Parmesan cheese + some for topping (if you prefer)
pepper and garlic powder to taste
cooking oil
spaghetti sauce
Process the cannelini beans in a food processor until they are coarsely chopped. Combine them in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients (except for the cooking oil and spaghetti sauce). Add more oatmeal or breadcrumbs if necessary until the mixture is about like a meatloaf would be in consistency. (Ergo, cohesive but somewhat loose.) Preheat the oven to 400F. Put the cooking oil in a thin layer on the bottom of a glass baking dish. One at a time, and with wet hands, form meatballs out of the bean mixture.*** Place them in the baking dish so that they don't touch each other. Put the dish in the oven and bake them for 30-45 minutes, or until hot and fairly firm. Remove them from the oven and pour a little spaghetti sauce over each meatball. (I refuse to call it a beanball.) Return them to the oven and bake about 5 more minutes. Put your meatballs on a serving platter or dish. Top them with spaghetti sauce and Parmesan cheese like you would a regular meatball. Heck, if you feel extra crafty cook some pasta and serve them all in with that.
________
*Yes, I used leftover barley. Grandmom raised me well. As further proof, I also used the beans, tomato, and onion from an unsatisfactory batch of Bean & Pasta Soup I made earlier this week without the benefit of chicken stock. (Not intentionally-- I forgot I had bought seafood stock for the Loco Moco and didn't want to try that in my Bean & Pasta Soup, so used plain water as the base. Yes, ugh.) The pasta part of the soup is now sitting in my freezer, from whence came the barley. Love me, love my leftovers.
**You could dispense with the barley and rice and only use an equivalent amount of oatmeal if you wanted, although the barley gave the meatballs a nice bite. I used the barley because a) I thought I could, b) FINISH FINISH NO THROW AWAY! and c) when I was making my grocery list I didn't include oatmeal because I knew I had some instant in the cabinet...instant maple-brown sugar flavored! So basically what happened was this: I dumped the whole packet in, casually read the side of the paper as I was about to throw it away, and then hurriedly dumped out as much of the instant oatmeal as I could. I then defrosted the barley. Before I overcompensated with pepper they were some pretty maple syrup-flavored meatballs.
***This basically looks like you're playing a very slow and solemn game of "hot potato" with the vegetarian meatball. And yes, the wet hands do really make it easier. It has the same result as when you flour your hands before handling pastry or oil your hands before handling candy. What this says about my vegetarian meatballs, I don't know.
Grandmom and I once had a shouting match over the tv. Grandmom likes Romantic Comedies. I do not, but hey, my choices were: sit in another room from the person I came to visit or watch a Romantic Comedy with her. It happened to be "The Wedding Planner", starring J. Lo as The Lovelorn Underappreciated Career Woman Looking for Love and Matthew Mcconaughey as The Antihero Who Supposedly Wins the Audience with His Bad Boy Charm. Long story short, by the end of the movie I was shouting at the tv like it was the superbowl for J.Lo's character to go with the nice Italian boy who came all the way from Italy to meet her, and my mild, gentle Grandmom was shouting right back, "BUT SHE DOESN'T LOVE HIM!!!!" Only in an Italian household would two women watching a Romantic Comedy on a couch in front of the tv become loud. We may or may not have had ice cream afterwards. Ice cream heals all wounds.
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