Polpette al limone from Sicily
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
"Please don't eat the lemon leaves" Massimo Mele/Gourmet Traveller
It's a dismal day, and so I just decided to do an ordinary 'dish of the day' kind of thing, picking another kind of meatball from my meatball book Around the World in 80 Meatballs. This time I picked a Sicilian recipe Polpette al limone - meatballs with lemon. No picture in the book and no recipe online, but having now exlored a large number of options online I think there is no need, because really this is one of those waste not want not kind of recipes that the Sicilians, being historically poor, are so good at. And lemons grow bountifully in Sicily. And the recipes below are all sort of similar.
Another conclusion I have come to is that there are two kinds of polpette al limone - the type shown above - a recipe for Lemon scented goat meatballs from chef Massimo Mele in Gourmet Traveller - and the type without the lemon leaves. And yes he made his with goat meat, for which you can substitute whatever, because there really doesn't seem to be a particular meat that is vital for this dish. In Sicily that sometimes includes horsemeat - so why not goat?
Origins? Who knows. People just make these things up from what they have - but probably from the Arabs and the Greeks who at various points in time colonised Sicily.
So let's deal with the ones with the leaves - a notion I first came across from Giorgio Locatelli in The Guardian who gives us his Sicilian friend Vittorio's recipe - alas no picture.
Elsewhere I found the advice to make sure that your lemon leaves have not been sprayed with anything. You could die! The advice was given in a post on FX Cuisine, which reported on Eleanora Consoli - whom many describe as the ultimate source for Sicilian food - making Sicilian lemon leaf meatballs
As you can see from both of those pictures the meatballs end up being more patties than balls, although that's not always the case. Apparently in Sicily you can buy them already rolled up in leaves that have been softened by boiling for a while. I'm not sure whether you have a sausage shape here or a couple of meatballs sandwiched together. I don't think you eat these leaves either however, because virtualy always the lemon wrapped meatballs are either barbecued, grilled or fried.
The writer of the website Sicily Anywhere whose Purpetti i limoni (the Sicilian name) are shown here, and who provided the picture of those in a shop tells us:
"The more homestyle way to accomplish this is to just sandwich your meatballs between the leaves and grill them. If you have a lot of them to do, or if you prefer a more orderly grill, you can blanch the lemon leaves and roll them around meatballs like a small sausage, which you can skewer a few at a time."
The last one to actually use the lemon leaves for extra flavour was Dominique Rizzo's Sicilian lemon grillled meatballs from the website 1 Million Women. This recipe tells you to wrap the meatballs in the lemon leaves, and then refrigerate before cooking. Frying in this case.
My original source, Bunny Banyai also refrigerates her wrapped meatballs, but she then tells you to remove the leaves before frying. She seems to be the only one to do this.
Because these recipes mostly end up with the leaves, they are not generally served with a sauce - they seem to be more of an antipasti mouthful - perhaps squeezed with some lemon juice. A snack rather than a meal.
In this spirit the writer of Italy on my mind, presented his or her Chicken meatballs with basil and lemon with a bowl of lemony mayonnaise ready for dipping the meatballs into. Which was a good idea, and one that you could vary ad infinitum.
He or she also used chicken as the meat, which to me seemed to be the right kind of meat for a lemony flavour.
That lemony flavour was almost always provided by grated lemon zest - mostly the lemon juice was reserved for the sauce, if there was one, or to be squeezed over them. Other common flavours were fennel seeds and parsley, garlic and always the meatballs were lightened with bread soaked in water or milk, and bound together with egg.
I mentioned sauce which was mostly more of a deglazing kind of a sauce, rather than one in which the meatballs had cooked as in these: Meatballs with lemon and parsley - Siciliani Creativi; Lemon and white wine meatballs - Syliva Colloca/Facebook; Polpette di pollo e ricotta con limone - Rachel Roddy/Mark's Kitchen Diary - yes Rachel Roddy adds ricotta to hers; and Polpette con limone - Sicilian Girl
The only one I found to cook the meatballs in a lemony sauce was Nagi Maehashi on a website called Spend with Pennies. Well she is definitely not Italian but she did give them a Sicilian name of piccata - Creamy lemon piccata meatballs and they did look pretty tempting. It was also much more of a main meal.
Speaking of main meals, I rarely saw any of these dishes served with pasta, although some mentioned that you could - or rice - an Arab touch perhaps. Even mash was suggested by somebody. Or just bread.
It really did seem to be a specifically Sicilian idea however, in spite of one blogger saying that they had eaten it in Capri - well Capri is famous for lemons too, so why not?
I checked out all my Italian cookbooks but not one of them had a recipe, not even anything similar. There were meatballs galore but virtually all in tomato sauce.
"Show me someone who's not been seduced by the food of Sicily and I'll show you an idiot." says Bunny Banyai in her introduction to my source recipe and I'd have to say that the idea of meatballs flavoured with lemon is seductive - particularly in a creamy lemony sauce - not authentic - but I'm a sucker for creamy lemony sauces. I should try out my source recipe soon however. I did say I would half work my way through the book.
I'm also a sucker for Ottolenghi who only comes close with this recipe for Beef meatballs with lemon and celeriac, which is not at all the same thing really - there is no lemon in the meatballs and there is celeriac in the sauce - but it is lemony and it is meatballs - from Jerusalem this one, written with Sami Tamimi.
YEARS GONE BY
May 18
2024 - Dithering over dinner
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2019 - A chocolate mousse mistake
2017 - The breakfast buffet
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