Meatless balls gone bad

I make a mean meatball,  but recently I came across a melanzane ball recipe. Or eggplant. I am always down for disguising veggies for my kids and I am mad about melanzane myself. So I tried it. And it didn't go well. So I tried it again.


The original recipe called for a traditional red sauce. But here's the thing... eggplant isn't pork or beef. So it doesn't adhere they way real meatballs do (I also got this on good authority from several Italian women who have been cooking for a combined 150 years).  What I got was a saucepan full of broken up (albeit tasty) meatless polygons. I came up with an alternative cooking mode- and it wasn't half bad!


5 long skinny eggplant or 2 rotund (1lb cooked)
fistful of pecorino
fistful of parm
2 eggs
1 c milk
three slices of bread
breadcrumbs
mint or basil
salt
pepper
oil
liter of tomato puree

Peel (or not- depending on your taste) and cube the eggplant in to small pieces. Boil in salted water for approx 5 minutes.
Soak three pieces of bread in milk.
Drain and SQUEEZE all water out of the eggplant. Let eggplant cool. Squeeze water out again, making the mixture as dry as possible. Squeeze excess milk out of bread and break up into crumbs, combining with eggplant. Add pecorino, parmesan, salt, pepper and mint or basil (to taste). Add eggs and mix together. Add breadcrumbs IF NEEDED to make the consistency of the  mixture more solid. Roll in to balls and roll in breadcrumbs.

At this point, the original recipe called for dropping the balls in to the puree and braising . And you can do this- just know it is going to look like glop: 

I also pan fried them- they turned out beautifully but if you ask me they are more like fritters than balls. I served them with chopped tomatoes (cultivated near Mt. Vesuvius) and sweet red onions (from Tropea in Calabria). They were tasty and would be great for a party as they are a good hand held snack that will also keep at room temperature.

And for all you purists.... here is the recipe for the real thing:
1lb ground meat (I have the butcher grind beef and pork)
2 eggs
150 g or 5 oz fresh bread crumbs**
handful of parmasan and pecorino
sea salt
pepper
parsley
garlic
oil
liter of tomato puree


** grind up fresh bread with a food processor or blender OR you can soak the bread in milk and break it up by hand.


Mix, meat, bread crumbs, eggs, grated cheeses, salt, pepper, parsley (to taste). Let sit in fridge for one hour. 


Add oil and garlic to your pan- heat. Add Tomato puree. Salt.
Roll matballs and drop in to saucepan. Cook on low to medium heat for approx 30 covered. And stir occasionally.