Keftethes

This is the recipe that started it all. It is a Perry family secret. Do not share this recipe with anyone who likes tofu, anyone on a low fat diet, or anyone who stops eating merely because they are full.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds of ground lamb
• 1 pound of ground beef
• 1 Spanish onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 eggs
• 1-pound loaf of Pepperidge Farm Whole Wheat bread (it’s gotta be Pepperidge Farm)
• Dried oregano (if it’s old, then smell to make sure it’s fresh)
• Flour
• Vegetable oil
• Lemon juice

Directions:

1. Mince the onion and garlic in a food processor or grate them by hand. Add a little salt, but don’t tell Yia Yia. Remove the crust from the bread. Soak the bread in cold water. Mush it down and get it wet. Don’t ask me how much water. Mix the soaked bread, the grated onions & garlic, and two eggs. Mix it all up by hand until it looks like oatmeal.
2. Cover the mixture with a layer of oregano (about two palm-fulls). Mix in two heaping tablespoons of vinegar. Add the meat. Squeeze the mixture with your hands until there is no red left. The most important step: Smell. There should be a distinct oregano/onion/vinegar smell, in that order. If you don’t smell the oregano, add more. The mixture should be moist.
3. Cut open a brown paper shopping bag and cover with a layer of wax paper. Scoop a generous amount of flour onto the wax paper and spread it out.
4. Pour vegetable oil into a chicken fryer, about one-inch deep. Heat the oil. While the oil is heating, prepare the first batch of keftethes for frying. Using a tablespoon, scoop up a rounded spoonful of meat from the edge of the bowl and drop the meat onto the flour, forming a meatglob (not a meatball; that comes later). Repeat enough times to fry a first batch of meatballs (about a dozen).
5. After you have enough, roll each meatglob until it is covered with flour. Then, pick up the meatglobs one at a time and toss them back and forth in your hands to form them into meatballs. Allow the flour to fall off the meatball as you are doing this. When the first batch of meatballs is floured, drop them in the oil and fry on one side until browned. Flip and fry the other side.

Pointers:

1. Don’t let the uncooked meatballs sit too long before frying them. The flour will soak into the meat and the meatballs will not be crispy.
2. Don’t over-flour the meatballs. Loose flour will collect in the bottom of the frying pan and turn the meatballs black. It tastes fine, but looks ugly.
3. Try not to eat more than half of the keftethes before they are served.