My Favorite Team's Balls

It's barely September and already it's starting to get a little chilly here in the Angry Chef neighborhood. It seems like every year that bitch, Mother Nature, makes summer just a little bit shorter. In some ways this is a good thing: I'm not sweating through my shirts at work anymore, I don't have to smell the unidentified animals my redneck neighbors grill, more TV is on the way, and, most important, one of my favorite sports, football, begins.
Please, please don't start to think I'm talking about soccer. The World Cup is great every four years but that's my limit. I'm talking smash mouth, hard nosed, 1st and ten, down and dirty FOOTBALL (with helmets, for non-scrimmage games). There are few substitutes.
First of all, let's review the teams you can not possibly cheer for and still enjoy this site. Real chefs do not like the Dallas Cowboys or the Minnesota Vikings. Real chefs believe that you should not call yourself a football team if your cheerleaders are more of an attraction then the game you play is. Real chefs believe that you should not call yourself a football team if your mascot has ponytails and your playing field is named after a mall (honestly Vikings, what was your second choice, "Victoria's Secret Dome"?). If you are a fan of either of these two teams you should log out right the fuck now and go check out The Justin Beiber homepage. Join a wiffleball league and have someone bruise you to death with one of the bats.
OK, now that all the rejects have been weeded out, we can get on to serious football appreciation. I won't tell you who the Angry Chef's favorite team is, because I believe in choice. I may hand you a box of Kleenex if you're a Browns fan. I may wonder if football is really the sport you're interested in if you're a Dolphin's fan. I will roll up my windows and lock my doors if you're a Raiders fan. And I will ask you how my buddy, Ditka, is nowadays if you're a Bears fan. Because hey, that's choice. I choose to back a team that is all about getting the sack. Enjoys a nice rack. Breaks the opponents back. Is constantly on the attack. Etc...
So just before the Sunday game this week, I call up my sous-Angry chef, Tulip, and tell her to get her ass over here. And we start on the first of many football munchies.
What You Need To Get
3 Tablespoons of butter
Half a Cup water
Pinch of salt
3/4ths of a Cup flour (ask any elderly neighbor)
3 eggs
3/4ths of a Cup grated Gruyere, Swiss, or Cheddar cheese (These rank from classiest, to true fan, to get your ass off the couch on the rating scale. I use a combo of all three.)
1 lb. celery root (you won't be able to find this if you're shopping at your local Quickie Mart)
1 lemon
1/4th of a Cup mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons mustard
2 Tablespoons water
Salt and pepper (to taste, so a lot)
We start with the cheeseballs, or, since I learned this in fucking France, the "choquettes". First, I cut the butter into little bits and throw it in a pan with the half cup of water and the pinch of salt. I let this come to a melty boil.
In the meantime, my sous-Angry chef, Tulip has sprayed a baking sheet with some Pam and sprinkled it with a light coating of flour. This will be the surface that the balls will bake on. Kind of like the tundra of your favorite teams stadium.
I take the pan off the heat before it really gets going and slowly stir in the flour with either a fork or a whisk. GO SLOW. You don't want to fuck this part up. Make sure there aren't any lumps or chunks of unidentifiable shit in it. When it's all mixed in, I put the pan back on a low, low, heat.
Once again, while constantly stirring, I SLOWLY add in the eggs and the cheese. If you do this right, you'll soon get a a thick, moldable (is that a word?) dough.
My sous-Angry chef, Tulip, uses a spoon to scoop out walnut sized hunks of the dough onto the baking sheet, while I jokingly suggest that this may be all the action she sees this month. I don't know why, but I'm almost in a good mood. She does not appreciate this and begins to suggest other things she could do with the spoon. So the mood passes.
When we have about 16 balls, and we're out of dough, we stick them in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes. After that, we'll turn off the oven, open it up, and let the balls cool down slightly inside. We will probably make more at halftime.
While the balls are cooking, I move on to step two of our football munchies. I start with the celery root (it looks like a potato that no one asked to the prom), peeling it and then grating the whole thing into a bowl. Watch your hands, real chefs only bloody their knuckles on telemarketers and people who sing about "five dollar foot longs" at Subway.
Then, my sous-Angry chef, Tulip, takes the lemon, slices it in half and squeezes the juice into the bowl with the celery root. She still seems angry, but maybe she's just relaxed around me.
After that it's a snap. We take what's left, the mayo, mustard, water, salt and pepper and add it to the mix and stir. And there you have it. A great dip for crackers and veggies and deep fried anything. I like Scoops and Triscuits. My sous-Angry chef, Tulip, likes jalapeno poppers and donuts. To each his own. It's all about choice.
We sit down with our "choquettes" and dip and admire their regal colors. Then, we watch our team beat the crap out of any pretenders that dare to take them on. There might be some sort of metaphor here, but I'm too into the game to figure it out...