Traditions: Meatsticks (aka City Chicken)

Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend, so I thought I'd share one of my family traditions with you.  I'm not Ukrainian by birth, but my eldest aunt has been married to a Polish/Ukrainian man for over 45 years, and my uncle's culinary traditions made their way to our Canadian table.

Every year for Thanksgiving we have the usual turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pie, but we also have pierogies, cabbage rolls and meatsticks.

My family has always called these fried, breaded pork skewers "meatsticks", but in many parts of North America where Eastern Europeans have settled, they're called City Chicken.  Believe it or not, chicken was once such a luxury item that this imitation drumstick was created from cheap cuts of pork. 

And they are SO delicious. If you're keeping track, we serve three kinds of meat at our Thanksgiving: turkey, pork and beef in the cabbage rolls.  But the meatsticks have long been my favourite and they're great any time of year (we have them at Christmas too).

So here's my family recipe for meatsticks, courtesy of my wonderful aunt.

Pork & Mushroom Dumplings

Well, these were fantastic!  It's a bit of a project to assemble the dumplings.  It takes a little time but it's not that hard. And the effort is worth it. 

This recipe made 40 dumplings, so there were plenty leftover to freeze.  

One special ingredient I needed to track down was round dumpling wrappers.  My local supermarket has a decent supply of Asian ingredients, but only had square wonton wrappers, so I had to go to the Chinese speciality store for these.  But they only cost a buck!  

Here's what you need for these fantastic dumplings:

Pappardelle with Sausage Tomato Sauce

99% if the time when I make pasta, I use whole wheat noodles.  I've found a wonderful brand that really tastes great.  But whole wheat pappardelle isn't easy to find, and I have to admit I loved the white pasta in this.  But it us just as good with whole wheat! 

The recipe comes from Lidia Bastianich and it tastes fantastic.  It's a little more time-consuming than ideal for a weeknight, but if you make it once you can eat for a week (or refrigerate or freeze the leftovers for next week).  

Here's what you need:

Batch Cooking - Turkey Meatballs

I've made these meatballs before. They're great in this Italian Wedding Soup, but they have plenty of other uses and it's great to have a bunch on hand in the freezer for soup, spaghetti and other meatball dishes in minutes.  

I ended up using four pounds of ground turkey to make about 120 meatballs.  but started with two pounds.  

Add 1/2 cup the bread crumbs to the turkey.

Then add a tablespoon of garlic powder.

And a tablespoon of dried Italian seasoning.

Then add 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 1 teaspoon each salt and pepper and two eggs.

Mix it all together to combine.

I wore gloves because, to be honest, it's kinda gross to touch.

Roll it into small-ish meatballs.  You should be able to get about 30 meatballs per pound of turkey.  I placed them on a cookie sheet lined with plastic wrap.

The batch at the back is another two pounds of turkey with parmesan cheese also added to the meatballs.

I set two large pans over medium heat and added a bit of oil to each to cook the meatballs in batches.  Honestly, next time I think I'd just put them in the oven, but the pan gives them a nice brown crust. 

Add the meatballs to the pan without crowding.

Flip to brown on all sides.  

Once they're browned all over...

... remove to a plate to cool.  And add another batch to the pan with more oil if necessary.

Once the meatballs are all cooked and cooled it's time to package them up.

I used medium freezer bags and added about 16 meatballs per package.

And ended up with 7 nice meals for the freezer.  About an hour of prep saves hours of time on busy weeknights.  Just thaw and add to soup, pasta sauce, or any other sauce to heat through and serve.

Batch Cooking - Roast Chickens

Even with just the two of us I find it helpful to do large batch cooking sometimes to save time and feed us for many meals.

I found a deal on whole chickens so I got two!

I roasted the chickens with vegetables and made a pan sauce for the first meal, then used the leftovers for other meals throughout the week.

You can just as easily do this with one chicken (or three if your pan's big enough!), but here's how I did two.

Two plump chickens. These are about 3 pounds each.

I also love to roast fennel with chicken.  

Put a little oil in the bottom of a roasting pan.

Core the fennel.

Slice the fennel, not too thin, and toss it in the roasting pan.

Add some carrots and an onion, quartered.

This roasting pan has a V-shaped rack which works well to let air circulate around the chickens, but you can just drop them on top of the vegetables if you don't have a rack. That's what I always did before I got this pan.

Rub the chicken all over with some olive oil, salt and pepper.  Sprinkle some salt and pepper inside as well.

You can also stuff half a lemon and some herbs inside.  I used sage, rosemary and thyme.

I also like to sprinkle paprika over the chickens.  It gives a nice golden colour as it roasts.

I cook the chickens breast-down for the first half hour.

Then flip them over, breast side up for the last hour or so.  

This allows the skin to crisp up on both the top and bottom.

Once the chicken is done, remove the birds and the vegetables from the pan and cover to keep warm.

The other nice thing about this pan is it can straddle two burners to make a sauce.  Sprinkle a tablespoon of flour over the pan juices.  

Then whisk in some chicken stock. Let the sauce bubble for a few minutes to thicken up.  You can strain it into a gravy boat if you're fancy...

... or just pour it over your chicken and potatoes.

We each had a drumstick and half a breast and there was tons of chicken left over for lunches and dinners later in the week.