Hamburger Meatball Things

The recipe is a artificial construct. It's not something that exists outside of our desire to impose order on an otherwise chaotic universe.

The more you cook, the more the boundaries between recipes start to blur. You realize that a pancake could be a crepe if you thinned it out and added a little more egg, and if you slightly altered that ratio and baked it, you might get a souffle. And when that goes stale you could soak it, bake it again, and throw it into a bread pudding.

Hence these little piles of meat. They lie between a hamburger, a meatball, and something one of my French-Jewish relatives once made that she called "kgrebsz!" (At least that's what it sounded like.)

I used ground beef from a local farm, an egg, paprika, more oregano than you think you need, and, I swear, almost as much roughly chopped garlic as meat. Every time I make these I add more garlic, and I have yet to think it's too much. Put them under the broiler until they look good and break free from the tyranny of categorization.