What’s cooking? Pallotte Cac’ e Ov’

Here’s a fantastic local dish that couldn’t possibly be any simpler.  It’s one of those things that, when you first eat it, you swear you’ve eaten it before.  At least I did, but I’m pretty sure I’d never had it.

Warning, it’s by no means “diet” food.  But, it’s definitely worth indulging in now and then.

You’re wondering about the name?  Well, in dialect, Cac’ e Ov’ means cheese and eggs and is pronounced cash’eh ohv.  Basically, they’re bread and cheese “meatballs”.

I’m sure this recipe probably stemmed from a way to use old bread.  If you have some old Italian style bread (please, no “wonder bread”), just crumble the white part up to make some bread crumbs.

Once formed they are fried and then cooked in tomato sauce.  (We always have to try them before they’re put in the sauce since they’re good that way too).  I’m sure you already know how to make tomato sauce, so just use your favorite recipe.

Ingredients

5 cups fresh bread crumbs
1 1/2 cups grated pecorino (or parmigiano)
4 eggs

Tomato Sauce

Directions

Set tomato sauce to simmer.

Mix the bread crumbs, grated cheese and egg together in a bowl.  If it seems a bit too liquid, you can always add some dry bread crumbs to firm it up a bit.  Form them into egg-shaped balls and brown them on all sides in vegetable oil. (I don’t fry with olive oil because I find it too heavy and it gets dark too quickly).  Move them to a paper lined dish to drain the oil off.

About 5 minutes before you are ready to serve them, add them to the pot of simmering tomato sauce.  You want them to take in some of the sauce and heat through, but not become soggy.  There’s nothing worse than soggy pallotte.

You can serve them as a main dish or an appetizer.

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