Meatballs and Shortbread

OK, so this is something of an odd combination.  But, as Christmas approaches, we've been making more of an effort to spend time cooking. And we didn't eat them together!

So, a few weeks ago S decided she wanted meatballs for dinner (!) and I just grabbed the nearest recipe we had, which is Polpettine alla Salvia from Rustic Italian Cooking.

We used 1 1/2 lbs. of organic ground beef, a finely diced onion, chopped fresh sage (a dozen leaves), some salt and pepper, nearly a cup of freshly grated parmesan (the recipe calls for a quarter that amount), an egg, and some leftover Panko (maybe a quarter cup). S squished them together for half an hour with her sturdy little hands and then she and P rolled them into small meatballs before he fried them in butter. They were AMAZING.

Then I decided we had to make Christmas shortbread. As usual the never-as-good-as-The-French-Laundry shortbread was disastrous, so I made Mom some of Baba-Grandma's whipped shortbread cookies with candied cherry in the middle. They were JUST like Baba's. It was incredible - I hadn't tasted that taste in 20 years.

Anyway, here they are, from the Women of Unifarm Cook Book. 2 lbs. softened butter (!), 2 c. icing sugar, 1 c. cornstarch, 6 c. flour. Whip. Drop. Bake at 325 for 20 mins. The crumb on these is absolutely perfect - they are like butter clouds.