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Cookbook Watch: ‘The Meatball Shop Cookbook’

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An entire cookbook about meatballs?

“Meatballs are the ultimate cure-all for anything that ails you — hangover, breakup, lack of sleep, even a crying baby,” write authors Daniel Holzman and Michael Chernow.

The two friends started out at 13 as delivery boys for a vegan restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Since then, they’ve worked their way up in the restaurant world, gotten into meat in a big way, and in 2010 opened the Meatball Shop on the Lower East Side. The concept? “Fast food for our generation. . . We decided that there was no reason meatballs shouldn’t be celebrated with their very own shop.”

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And now they have their very own book.

At first glance, the book would seem to belong in the category of dude food, perfect for that son or nephew living on their own for the first time. A closer look reveals a balanced selection of meatball and sauce recipes with sides, veggies, salads and sweets. As for the balls, they come in eccentric variations — Bolognese Balls, Jambalaya Balls, Bouillabaisse Balls, Fightin’ Irish Balls, Bunny Balls, etc., all from the revolving menu at the Meatball Shop. The recipes, therefore, have been thoroughly road tested. (And if you’re wondering, yes, there are some seafood balls as well as veggie balls.)

One of meatballs’ many virtues is that they “can be made a day in advance and then baked up to 24 hours later. Or they can be baked right away and kept in the fridge for up to three days and then reheated.” Handy, that.

Buy this book and you won’t run out of meatball recipes in this lifetime.

‘The Meatball Shop Cookbook’ by Daniel Holzman and Michael Chernow (Ballantine Books, 2011, 155 pages, $28).

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-- S. Irene Virbila

Twitter.com/sirenevirbila

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