Homemade Vegetarian Meatballs (Parve and Pesachdik)

This dish is so good that I use it year-round as a vegetarian meat recipe. The original recipe called for it to be used with a sweet and sour sauce with raisins, but it’s versatile. I’ve even used Italian seasonings, parsely, garlic, red pepper flakes, and pecorino romano cheese to make these into Italian meatballs. (Over Pesah this year, I did so, and enjoyed meatballs and sauce with cake meal pasta).

I make my own pasta for Pesah.

A blend of cake meal, extra virgin olive oil, salt, and eggs. Use potato starch to dust, and make the pasta using the well-method. It comes out light and soft, and not unlike fresh pasta that contains hametz in terms of flavor. I made a large batch this year, and with the vegetarian meatballs, eggplant, an antipasto of roasted red peppers, asparagus, artichokes oreganata, and provolone, and a nice, rich sugo and a glass of Barbera d’Alba, we had a delightful Pesah lunch on the second day.

I also used to be able to purchase a corn pasta from Eretz Yisrael in Holon on Kings Highway (obviously only good for those who are ochlei kitniyot) that was delicious. One of the benefits of having a Sepharadi father.

It tastes close enough. The 5 of us who ate it this year thought it was enjoyable enough. It is labor intensive, though, but I start preparing for Pesah 2 weeks in advance.

I don’t really have one. My grandmothers and aunts and great-aunts on both sides never used recipes. I eyeball things, and the results are always good. I have no family recipes, just ingredient lists, whether it was my mother’s nonna’s ravioli recipe (written in Italian) or my dad’s jaddah’s recipe for bazergan, sambusak, or djajeh (written in Arabic, from Syria). Sorry.