Mighty Meatballs -- Ikea Uncovers Our Longing For Simple Balls Of Meat In Sauce

FOOD FASHION, THAT EPHEMERAL mistress of all that is good in America (and a lot that is not), has not been kind to the meatball.

If you search through modern menus for representation of the noble meatball, chances are you will search in vain. If you browse through the latest generation of cookbooks, you will discover that the meatball is not only out of fashion, it is practically out of print.

The meatball has become too pedestrian for words.

And yet, if you put a bowl of them out at a cocktail party, napped in a little sweet and sour sauce and accompanied by humble toothpicks, they will disappear in hidden fits of piggishness, snatched and popped by flashing clandestine fingers.

You cannot in the 1990s serve spaghetti and (uh) meatballs to anyone except children, although if you suggest a menu of Pasta Magnifico con Polpete, chances are you won't have a polpete (meatball) left over.

It is a cruel paradox, one that seems to have been noticed by a Swedish millionaire named Ingvar Kamprad, who owns 175 huge stores worldwide. In 1994 more than 116 million people went to them.

They bought all kinds of stuff, from arm chairs to Christmas trees, and they ate all kinds of stuff, from pickled herring to cabbage rolls. But mostly they ate meatballs - by the millions. I just ate ten of them (only ten) the other day.

Ingvar Kamprad is to the world what Wal-Mart's Sam Walton is to rural America. Kamprad took his initials, IK, and added the initials of his farm and hometown, E and A, and founded IKEA - sprawling, warehouse-sized markets painted in the Swedish national colors, blue and yellow. All of them sell meatballs. Prodigious amounts of meatballs.

A small plate of meatballs (10) sells for $3.95; the standard plate (15) costs $4.95. For $5.95, you get 20 meatballs. Included are boiled red potatoes, a creamy beef gravy and a puddles of lingonberries.

Why meatballs? I asked the local IKEA chef, Jorn Mathiasen.

"They are to Sweden what McDonald's is to America,' he said. "Everybody associates meatballs with Sweden."

I asked for the recipe but Mathiasen pleasantly but firmly declined.

"I don't know it," he said. "I know what's in them: beef, pork, water, onion, bread, egg, salt, sugar and allspice, but I don't have the recipe.' Mathiasen does not make the meatballs himself. None of IKEA's chefs do. The corporate meatballs are made by the firm of Gunnar Dafgard, of Kallby, Sweden. They are mixed, rolled, cooked and shipped frozen, everywhere from Budapest to Bratislava, from Sydney to Singapore, Paris (where there are two stores) to Poznan. And, of course, to Renton, 600 S.W. 43rd St., where IKEA opened a 14,000-square-meters store last autumn.

The meatballs are reheated to very specific directions: 14 minutes in a 330-degree oven.

That information is worthwhile because you, too, can buy the IKEA meatballs frozen. They sell 2.5 pounds in a sturdy plastic pack for $9.95; 11 pounds (suitable for a poker night or a Super Bowl) for $34.95.

The gravy they are served in, "nothing too fancy," said Mathiasen, is made from a beef-stock base, augmented with cream and tarted up with a little lingonberry juice, "To give it a slight sweet-and-sour effect."

How are they?

Quite good, and in sufficient numbers satisfying. They are slightly smaller than walnut-sized and all too easy to consume in single bites. If I fiddled with the recipe, I'd roll them a tad bigger and maybe toss a little sour cream and ground black pepper into the gravy at the finish.

Much as I've admired the well-made meatball, I've never come up with a recipe that I felt was consistently perfect. The "Joy of Cooking" has reliable recipes for Swedish, German and Italian meatballs. The basic recipe is a one-inch thick slice of day old bread soaked in milk, water or stock, shredded and mixed with one and a half pounds of ground meat (beef, pork, veal, singly or in combination) and two eggs. The difference in seasonings affords the desired ethnic accent.

Bjorn Bayley, the local IKEA store director, eventually came through with the corporate recipe.

"They used to be made by a local butcher in Sweden," he said. "Now it's a factory on several acres. The cows come in on one end and meatballs come out on the other."

IKEA's Swedish Meatballs Serves 4 to 6 1 pound meat (3/4 pound lean ground beef, 1/4 pound lean ground pork) 1 small onion, grated (red is best) 1 teaspoon salt 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice 1 egg yolk 1/2 cup unsweetened bread cubes soaked in 1/2 cup hot water Butter for frying

1. Combine meat, onion, salt, allspice, egg yolk and soaked bread. Mix thoroughly until smooth. Shape meatballs. This is easier if you dip your hands in cold water or use two spoons. 2. Fry meatballs, 8 to 10 at a time, in melted butter over moderate heat. By shaking skillet now and then the meatballs with retain their round form and will brown evenly on all sides. 3. Serve with potatoes and lingonberry preserves.

(Copyright 1995, John Hinterberger. All rights reserved.)

John Hinterberger's restaurant and food columns appear in The Seattle Times in Sunday's Pacific Magazine and Thursday's Tempo. Ron Wurzer is a Times photographer.