Albóndigas con vegetales - 90

Ninety seems like a nice round number. I thought about stopping here at this very good dish, but then realized that before leaving on my trip there are many more Mexican meals that we'll be sharing before my departure.

Albóndigas - meatballs - are a popular way to consume ground meat in Spain and other Latin American countries. One of my biggest surprises on my first trip to Mexico was a meal of Sopa de Albóndigas. I had always considered them to be something you ate with pasta smothered in a red sauce, or something my parents took to a potluck under the name of "Swedish Meatballs." Those were served in a chafing dish (before crock pots became more popular) and were usually smaller than the variety found sitting atop your spaghetti. They were smothered in some kind of pasty looking gravy, and most of them (or at least the ones I tried) were rather flavorless. Swedish meatballs were to the 1950s and 1960s what chicken wings became in the 1990s.

But I digress. All of the meatballs I've had in Spain and in Mexico have been very tasty, and are always served in some kind of rich soup full of vegetables, or in some kind of thick, flavorful sauce. One of the things about the meatballs in Mexico that I have always liked was the addition of rice rather than bread or breadcrumbs and, in some homes, a tiny bit of fresh mint. Since our mint is just starting to pop out all over in the garden, I decided to snip some from the garden and add it to our albóndigas last night.

While the meatballs were cooking, I made a sauce of tomatoes, peppers, diced jalapeños, onions, mushrooms, and garlic. Once the sauce was prepared and had simmered for a while, I added the cooked meatballs and allowed the two parts of this dish to cook together for several hours. The meatballs were made from a very lean ground beef, so there was no problem with grease settling onto the surface of the sauce.

I also prepared brown rice, guacamole, and fresh corn tortillas to go with dinner last night. Javier ate a lot of everything I'd prepared, and I only ate a few albóndigas con vegetales, tortillas y un poquito del guacamole.