Refreshing the taste of comfort: Pork Meatballs with Juniper Berries

Juniper berries add a subtle, light freshness to pork meatballs. Wine, sherry and sour cream create a simple sauce. Recipes below.

This weird and messy winter just won’t quit us. Today it is a pleasant 50 degrees, and sunny, and all our windows are open. But  Saturday was cheerless and frigid, and not that far in our future is “damp and raw,” “periods of rain” and even a  nasty “wintry mix.”

The term wintry mix always sounds so dull and industrial. And it always makes me remember Sonny Eliot, a “weathercaster” in the Detroit of my youth, who brought the spirit of playfulness to TV reporting.

Sonny was not your stern gray dullard. His goal was accessibility—he pretty much invented the idea of weather forecasting as accessible entertainment. His cornball sense of humor included made-up weather terms created by mashing together two or three more mundane ones. Among these hybrids: snow + fog → snog; slush + fog → slog; freezing + drizzly → frizzly;  hazy, hot and humid → ha ho hum.

What we will be getting in a couple of days, he would have said, is not a  mere wintry mix. We will be getting snain—snow plus rain. This is a term I actually still use. And in honor of this wretched perpetual winter, I want to add: what else can you do, faced with the exhausting bummer of a season we’ve had, which just will not get the hell away, but keep finding ways to make yourself feel better about it?

These meatballs will make you feel better. They are easy to make and the house smells great while you are making them. The combination of juniper and black pepper is lively and subtle, but not fiery. The meatballs are not tiny, nor are they giant swollen blobs. And they are surprisingly satisfying. You are not going to need to eat five or six of them at a time. I actually found that three was a more than ample single serving. And if you make enough for leftovers, you will find the flavors have developed even more overnight.

Pork Meatballs with Juniper Berries
Makes about 20 meatballs

For the meatballs:
1-1/2 pounds ground pork (see Kitchen Notes)
9 or 10 juniper berries
3/4 teaspoon peppercorns
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon minced shallot
4 tablespoons panko (or other bread crumbs—see Kitchen Notes)
4 tablespoons milk (any milk)
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the sauce:
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 cup dry red wine
3/4 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup port or Marsala or medium sherry
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the peppercorns, juniper berries and nutmeg in a spice mill or small coffee grinder and grind them together to a fine powder.

Put the ground pork in a mixing bowl. Add the ground spices, minced shallot, panko, milk and salt. Mix it all together with your hands. Form into meatballs and set them out on a plate or cutting board. Use about 2 tablespoons meat for each meatball. A pound and a half of ground pork will yield about 20 meatballs.

Preheat oven to 350ºF and start the sauce. Put the red wine and garlic clove in a saucepan and cook down the wine to about half its volume. Don’t go wandering off during this part of the process. When the wine is sufficiently shrunk down, add the chicken stock, bay leaf and port, and simmer together for a minute or two. Turn off the heat. Discard the garlic clove.

Start the meatballs. Heat olive oil an ovenproof skillet that has a lid. Quickly brown the meatballs all over, turning them gently with a pair of wooden spoons. If they yield a lot of fat, take them out of the skillet and wipe out the pan, then put them back in the skillet. Add the wine sauce and season with salt and pepper. The meatballs should not be immersed in the sauce—hip-deep is more like it. Cover the skillet and transfer to the oven for 15 minutes.

Return the skillet to the stovetop (careful!—the handle is hot, she said ruefully). Turn on the heat to low and whisk in the sour cream. Then stir together the cornstarch and water and whisk into the sauce. Stir until the sauce is gently thick. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Serve over your favorite comfort starch—here, we used mashed potatoes, but a wide egg noodle would be lovely too. Serve with a steamed green vegetable, like green beans. To drink, I recommend a simple, big red table wine, or a nice beer.

Kitchen Notes

Grind your own pork? We prefer to. It just tastes better. You can control what’s in it and make sure it is as fatty or non-fatty as you like, plus you will know it is fresh. Choose cuts with some marbling and use the regular blade in the food processor, pulsing in short bursts (this is not a task for the blender!). Or, should you welcome a meditative task, mince the pork with a good sharp knife—the texture will be very nice.

Sour or not? If you don’t like sour cream, you can also use just plain ol’ cream or half and half instead.

Any port in a storm? The idea here is to add a dash of a slightly sweet fortified wine. Port, sherry, Marsala—pick your favorite.

Panko? We usually have these Japanese breadcrumbs in the pantry because they are so nice for so many purposes—they make a lovely crunchy breading that just never seems to get soggy, for instance. You can use straight-ahead breadcrumbs if you wish.