Swedish Cheat-balls

I'm always looking for new ways to use the leftover bits of meals, and Thanksgiving meals are always prime sources for "bits." Since we started making our own cranberry sauce a few years ago, we've consistently made too much but it's always been delicious and it's felt such a shame to throw out.

I have a love of those salty swedish meatballs at Ikea, and had been thinking for a while about making a version of them from frozen meatballs, and using the leftover cranberry sauce to make a curried "lingonberry-like" dressing. I figured multiple uses of those yummy trader-joes meatballs was also a fun thing to play with, so I did.

The key is really the sauce- it needs to be clearly meat-flavored, and rich and creamy. And a little sweet. The sauce isn't complicated, but it needs to be flavorful.

I started with a pan of butter, and cooked the meatballs for a few minutes. Basically the meatballs are pre-cooked, so all I'm trying to do is flavor the butter. I moved the meatballs to a pan in the oven, to cook thru and fully soften up. I added some flour to the butter, and made a quick roux. This is a bit tricky; flour will cook fast, and smell and taste burnt fast too. The pan only stayed on the flame for about a minute- just enough time to whisk the flour into the butter. Then I added beef broth, and kept whisking and whisking till the sauce was smooth. Now-you want to use good broth here, because that is the backbone of the sauce. How much broth you use is kinda up to you-you can put in a lot, and simmer to thicken it, or put a little, cook it long enough to get rid of raw flour taste and get on with it. I just had to cook it long enough for the frozen cranberry sauce to defrost. I added some milk-no cream on hand-and kept the sauce on a simmer, tasting and seasoning as needed. When I was happy with it (added a little pepper and nutmeg) I added the sauce to the meatballs, and let it all simmer together for 15 minutes-letting it get more meat-flavored and infuse the meatballs with the sauce flavor.

I keep saying meat flavor, but this can be made with chicken or turkey meatballs, or meatless meatballs and mushroom broth. Yah- meatless meatballs in mushroom broth sauce with some tarragon in it...

Anyway, here's what I ended up with- looks good-or at least like swedish meatballs, and it was tasty. The other stuff on the plate is mache (for color) and steel-cut oat risotto with figs and apricots-further post to come!