Chef Joey Campanaro grew up in Philadelphia and could often be found in the kitchen of his grandmother’s house next door.
“I grew up with a large family in South Philadelphia, which is very busy and do what you do in the city,” said Campanaro, whose father was a firefighter and whose mother worked for the school district. ‘It was always like’ go to your grandma’s house and hang out there ‘. Usually she made pasta. I really loved it. “
All these years later, the recipes he learned while keeping his grandmother company are the foundation of his cooking philosophy at his New York restaurant The Little Owl. It’s also what inspired his cookbook Big Love Cooking.
“She survived the depression and was the eldest of five children,” said Campanaro, who also co-owns the Market Table and The Clam restaurants in Manhattan. “There were really hard times, but when it came to cooking, she did things for people she loved. And she loved to do it. “
The book dedicates an entire chapter to Sunday Supper, beginning with his Sunday Gravy – a recipe he calls his “North Star” of cooking and learned from his grandmother. Of course, he also had to add his Gravy Meatball Sliders, a wildly popular dish that was an instant classic when the Little Owl opened in 2006. Campanaro attributes the sensational customer response to the total lack of pretension.
‘I said, you know what? Let’s make something great that people can eat with their hands, ”he recalls.
He doesn’t deny that the gravy-infused meatballs also have a little more to offer in terms of taste and texture. While he’s given the recipe a bit of an update over the years, it’s still rooted in his early days when he learned to cook in his Italian grandmother’s back-to-back kitchen.
Ready for a crash course in great love cooking? Here is Campanaro’s recipe for gravy meatball sliders and a few tips and tricks to make sure they come out perfect every time.
Although Campanaro’s meatballs contain three types of ground beef – beef, pork and veal – the chef says the result is ‘very light’.
“Some people [meatballs] can be a bit bricky, ”says Campanaro. “In the restaurant we serve them at the start of the meal – they are an aperitif. So you can have three of these meatballs and not feel bloated, and then you can go on and on and actually have an appetizer. Every time I eat one I am amazed at how light they are. “
Campanaro achieves that feat by adding a little water to the mix of meat, eggs, pecorino cheese, panko breadcrumbs, salt and pepper, and fresh parsley. He recommends refrigerating the raw meatballs before frying them – they stick together better and are much easier to maneuver in the pan. It’s also essential to bake in batches so you don’t overfill the golf ball-sized meatballs in the pan. This ensures that they brown well.
But before you portion and roll all of your meatballs, fry a small tester first to make sure you have the correct salt content. There’s nothing worse than frying them all to realize you should have added a little more spice. ‘My grandmother would taste [the meat mixture] raw, ”he says. And it was like, aren’t you worried about getting sick? And she says no, not at all. “
While Campanaro thinks the meat trio makes the best meatball, he says it would also be “absolutely delicious” to have one or two of them. The breadcrumbs can also be easily swapped out for a different kind, dry herbs can easily take the place of fresh (just use a little less) and the water, while important, also leaves some room for experimentation.
“One thing that might be nice is instead of water if you add a little wine to the raw meat mix,” he says. Aside from that, however, he recommends sticking with the recipe as best you can.
If you close your eyes and taste Campanaro’s Sunday gravy, you would swear it has pork sausage in it. It not. That’s because the Italian market on Christian Street in Philadelphia was closed on a Sunday while his grandmother was eating and she couldn’t get the Italian sausage she normally cooked in the sauce.
“She loved how the sausage flavored the gravy,” says Campanaro. And so she thought about it – what is Italian sausage? It’s not just ground pork, it has fennel seeds in it. So while she browned her onions and garlic, she had no sausage, so she put fennel seeds in what’s called the sofrito. “
He recalls being “very impressed” with her quick thinking and the taste of the gravy that stuck at Campanaro on Sunday. “That was something that I took over from her,” he says. “I feel really privileged to know that I took this little trick from a 75-year-old woman who cooks from the heart.”
To make the sauce, the chef uses the same pan in which the meatballs were cooked, straining out the excess oil first. After adding the whole canned tomatoes, stir the sauce while it cooks a little and then run it through a food grinder to get the ideal consistency. He then lets the sauce and meatballs simmer together for at least four hours. The longer it diminishes, the more concentrated the flavor will be.
“You have to be very careful when you stir,” says Campanaro. “There is a ring around the pan when the gravy gets smaller and the water evaporates and sticks to the side. That’s concentrating the flavor, so you have to get that off that jar and put it back in the gravy. “
If you find yourself missing some sauce afterwards, just do as Campanaro always did when he came into the kitchen and worked as a dishwasher: “I took a piece of bread and scraped [those bits] out of the jar, ”he says. “The chief saw me do that one day and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘I hate throwing it away. It’s that good. ‘”
While Campanaro serves the Gravy Meatball Sliders as a trio at the Little Owl on small buns, that’s far from the only way he likes to eat them. “I like it with pasta and I like it with salad,” he says. “In the restaurant we make this great Caesar salad and do you know how people like grilled chicken or grilled shrimp? At Little Owl we add a meatball. “
However you serve them, Camanaro says chances are you’ll be left. So to make sure they taste just as good the next day, heat the meatballs and gravy together in a large saucepan over low heat for about 20 minutes or until fully heated through. Then grate pecorino cheese over each meatball and watch it melt.
“Big Love Cooking is committed to the women who helped me become the person I am today, including my grandmother and my mother, ”said Campanaro. “That is more than just food, but life. And how eating and comfort foods in general can lead to good decisions. “
Little Owl Gravy Meatballs
* Makes 36 meatballs
Meatballs
INGREDIENTS
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 pound of ground pork
- 1 pound ground veal
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup of Pecorino cheese, finely grated
- 1 cup of Panko breadcrumbs
- Kosher salt
- Black pepper, freshly ground
- 0.25 cup of fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped
- 1 cup of cold water
- 1 cup of Canola oil
Gravy
INGREDIENTS
- Kosher salt
- Black pepper, freshly ground
- 0.25 cup of olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion, ends trimmed, peeled and roughly chopped
- 8 Garlic cloves, broken
- 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
- 0.5 cup of fresh parsley, finely chopped
- 8 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
- 0.5 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
- 4 cans of 28 oz. Whole peeled tomatoes
- 1 6 oz can of Tomato Paste
- 7 cups of water
TRAVEL DIRECTIONS
- Take two large baking trays (no oil needed, they are there to hold the meat) and place them close by. Also have a large bowl for the browned meat.
- To prepare the meatballs: In a large bowl, combine the beef, pork, veal, eggs, cold water, the pecorino, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and parsley. Use your hands to mix well and firmly form into 36 golf ball size balls, approximately 90 grams each. Cup your hands and roll them back and forth to really smooth them out and transfer to a baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill for at least 15 minutes.
- In the largest shallow pan you own, add the canola oil (the one with the maximum surface area so you can brown the meat comfortably – even a large cast iron skillet will do) over medium heat. You want to get the oil very hot, but don’t smoke.
- Remove the meatballs from the refrigerator and use a large slotted spoon to add one to the pan. Does that meatball immediately start crispy on the outside? Good. Your oil is hot enough. Continue to add the rest of the meatballs to the pot, leaving enough space between each meatball, and working in batches. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 4-5 minutes until dark brown and crispy on one side. Flip and cook on the other side until brown and crispy too, 4 to 5 minutes longer. Convince any stubborn meatballs that will stick to the bottom of the pan by tucking a slotted spoon underneath and pushing gently. Place the meatballs on the large dish and set aside.
- Dispose of the canola oil by pouring it over an empty can through a fine mesh strainer. The strainer will catch any brown bits of meat and the oil will cool in the can before throwing it away – my grandmother and my mom would save a tomato can from their previous jar of gravy. Use whatever is best for you.
- Set aside the strainer with pieces of meat.
- In the same empty pan over medium heat, heat the olive oil until shimmering and add the brown meat pieces, onion, garlic, fennel seeds, 2 tablespoons kosher salt, the parsley and basil, reduce heat to medium and cook until onions are light brown and everything smells great, about 5 minutes. If you like spicy gravy now is the time to add the red pepper flakes, if using.
- Open the tomato cans and pour the contents directly into the jar one at a time (the tomatoes do not need to be crushed; they go through the food grinder). Fill an empty tomato can with 1 cup of cold water, flip it over and toss that tomato water into the second can, turn it around and throw it into the third can, then add the tomato water to the jar plus 6 cups of water. You will have a watery tomato bread-like jar of love in front of you.
- Increase the heat until it begins to boil and reduce the heat to a simmer.
- Once the gravy is boiling, add the tomato paste grandmother’s way: by opening both the top and bottom of the can and pushing down the top lid to scrape through and catch the sticky pasta along the sides of the can so that no one will be drunk. Gently grip both metal lids at the bottom so you don’t cut yourself (and they don’t fall into the gravy). Cover the pan with the lid ajar and simmer, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, for about 30 minutes.
- Remove the pan from the heat and let it cool slightly, about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, place a food grinder with the smallest disk and place it on a large, shallow bowl. Use an 8 ounce ladle to transfer the cooled tomato gravy to the food grinder, turning in batches of 8 ounces at a time. When it goes through the food grinder, it will look even more watery when the tomato pulp, onions, and garlic are churned and mashed together. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the food grinder so that every piece of tomato and herbs goes back into the pot. Put aside.
- Use tongs or a slotted spoon to gently lower the meatballs back into the now-empty pan, along with the juices that collected on the dishes while the meat was resting. Transfer the ground tomato to the pot and cover the meatballs. Cover the pan with the lid ajar and let the Sunday gravy simmer and reduce for at least 4 hours, stirring gently from time to time.
Reprinted from Big Love Cooking by Joey Campanaro with permission from Chronicle Books, 2020.