I have never been to Sweden. I wouldn’t mind going, particularly since I have met some bomb-ass (as we say in prison) Swedes in my day, but that trip won’t happen until the gubmint sees fit to allow me a passport again. That’s somewhere years down to line. And although I have never been to Sweden, I’m willing to wager that what we, in the good old US of A, usually snarf down under the name “Swedish meatballs” is pretty much nothing like when you might get in Sweden. I imagine it’s rather like the difference between what we think of as Italian food in America when you compare it to eating in Italy. It’s such a radical difference that you begin to worry about the ways in which this country seems to have a numbing and dumbing effect on its immigrants. I’m so certain that the Bureau of Prison’s Swedish meatballs are so not like anything, at home or abroad, that should possibly bear that name, that I won’t even bother to wager on it. It just wouldn’t be fair.
Allegedly Swedish meatballs show up in the BOP menu at least once a month for a Sunday dinner. They are demoralizing. When I thought about, in the spirit of the Prison Laundry project, how to transform that dish into something I might want simply to look at, let alone eat, I knew that I had to move from the idea of “Swedish” all together. Sorry, Sweden, this isn’t meant to diss you, but you should know that the American gubmint is giving you a bad name. The Bureau of Prisons, of course, uses the same meatball for everything, not matter what ethnicity of cuisine they decide to call a dish. You might be familiar with, and frightened by, the meatballs I mean. These are the ones that come to you pre-freezer-burned, unseasoned, and impossibly dense in big bags that you can pick up in discount warehouse markets. What one should practically do with them outside of fire them from a slingshot remains a bit of a mystery. No, wait! There is one thing they are really great for. I once knew a rather brilliant dog trainer who suggested using them as rewards for especially stubborn but food-motivated dogs when you are training them. She suggest that and to use them as a reward when you are training your puppy to drop whatever doggie temptation has made it run from you and you really, really need to have you have the dog back under your control and at your side. And both those things work. Dogs really love them. Humans not so much.
So I needed a meatball dish, but they couldn’t be Swedish. Yet I still wanted something in a similar style to the Swedish meatballs (at least to how I imagined good ones might taste). Then along came, as I mentioned in the previous post, the mania to prepare spousal lunches that can be stored in the freezer. Then came a package of meatloaf mix sitting in the freezer begging for some use. Then, aha!, came the idea for Königberger Klopse. So I haven’t been to Sweden, but I have lived in Germany for 13 months, and for me this German classic (so classic some would say that it’s boring, old stodge) is something that’s quite comforting. And I took a bet that they might freeze well, too, given the fact that frozen Swedish meatball dinners are ubiquitous. I won’t go over the long-ish details of just how to make Königsberger Klopse, but I will tell you that because the name of the dish doesn’t translate will into English in a literal way (“meatballs from the city of Königsberg” which, by the way, is not longer a city in Germany after the Soviets conquered in in WWII and renamed it “Kaliningrad;” so basically “Bad JuJu meatballs” ), you might find them, as in this recipe, called something like “German Meatballs in Creamy Caper Sauce.” It you want to try them in your own kitchen, that recipe is actually really very good. But to my main point, this dish is really quite similar to what Swedish meatballs are likely supposed to be, and because I’m a sucker for anchovies, capers, and dairy, I’m going to be attracted to a dish like Königsberger Klopse which has them all. Plus, if I didn’t get to use the ice cream scooper to make cat heads when I did the meatloaf, I got to use a small scooper (bigger than a melon baller but smaller than Baskin-Robbins) to make these meatballs. I suppose you could call them “squirrel heads,” but that doesn’t seem such a great thing, either.
Anyway, these German meatballs are poached as a method of cooking and so they come out quite tender, unlike the frozen, discount BOP bullets, and the poaching liquid is turned into the sauce. It keeps all the flavors in the family. Moreover, the smell reminds me of some very good days I had living in Germany, and so that’s a strong and welcome contrast to the BOP’s version of Swedish cuisine. Even if both mine and their ended up on a plastic tray, mine was a plastic tray of joy. I like the flavor of irony, too. But aside from meatballs and sauce, we need some sides for our 3 compartment trays. First side is easy and what my northern German friends would have served with the Klopse: boiled new potatoes. How easy? Just take a bunch of boiled new potatoes and put them in some super-salty water (approaching salty like the sea). Bring them to a boil for 15 minutes. Drain. Done. Try them dipped in the sauce. For real. Try them that way.
Compartment #3 is another German staple: Rotkohl. This is simply braised red cabbage. Very stereotypically German, quite delicious, and amendable to being amended to your won tastes. I vary mine by mood, but usually it goes something like this: mince up an onion and saute it in a good amount of butter. Or you can cook up a few pieces of bacon, take them out when crisp, saute the onion in that and put the back back in later. Chop up a big apple and add that to the cooked onions for a bit. Shred up a small head of red cabbage into bite-sized pieces and put that in with the onions and breifly-cooked apples. Take cider or red wine vinegar, I use about a cup because I like my cabbage sour, and pour that over the vegetables. Then add salt, pepper, a tablespoon of brown sugar, a bay leaf, and some seasonings. Lots of people season with a couple juniper berries and couple whole cloves; I often use caraway seeds, either in addition or instead of. Lots of recipes also call for red currant jelly to be added as well. Whatever tingles your palate. Usually I don’t have an red currant jam lying around waiting to be used. You mix all that up together, put a lid on it and let it cook for about 90 minutes, adding more liquid in the form of water, apple juice, apple cider, or vinegar if it starts to dry out. Normally it pretty much steams itself, however, if you aren’t too aggressive with the heat under the pan. That’s it.
I prepped the trays, vacuum sealed them, and lunch was on it’s way with a hand reaching into the freezer. All this stuff freezes well, so there isn’t much recipe tweaking I’ll be doing in the future. If anything, I’ll just be refining flavors and playing with whims and moods. And those will be pleasant whims and moods. Not the sense of dread and duty that came with Swedish meatballs on a Bureau of Prison Sunday night.