Pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce

The best comfort meal for me? After my beloved minestrone it can only be spaghetti with meatballs.

Little sis Laura made this dish and we ate it for lunch with our cousin Daniela who came over from London to visit us. It felt great meeting up!

Blood relations can feel so powerful, they are just different to friendships, there is that history you share together and memories imprinted on your DNA. They say our genes can carry the memory of all our past generations as well and I believe in that. It makes sense, don’t you think?

We ended up having a little too much wine but great fun. We laughed a lot and the wine, a light and fragrant table wine Valpolicella went down so well with the meatballs. We finished our meal with some of my daughter’s leftover birthday cake. A real feast for us!

Although some people, when making meatballs prefer to mix different type of mince like pork and beef, I would just go for lean beef instead (mine was 10% fat and organic). I don’t like greasy sauces, they would make the whole meal much heavier. Buy the best mince you can afford.

This recipes serves 4 and makes about 40 meatballs.

• Prep Time : 30 minutes
• Cook Time : 35 minutes

Ingredients

• spaghetti – 350 g – 3 + 1/2 cup
• tomato sauce – 400 ml – 14 fluid oz
• lean mince – 350 g – a little more than 1 and 1/2 cups
• grated parmesan cheese – 3 tbsp
• onion – 1 small
• carrot – 1 small
• flour – to coat
• egg – 1
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• fresh basil leaves – handful

Instructions

First let’s prepare the sauce: chop the onion finely and the carrot.

In a pan stir fry the onion and the carrot for a couple of minutes with 2 tbsp of olive oil. Add the tomato sauce, a handful of basil leaves, salt and pepper and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes.

Mix the mince with the egg, grated Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.

Form balls the size of a small walnut and coat them with flour.

In a pan heat up 4 tbsp of olive oil then add the meatballs and cook them until nice and golden. Turn them on all sides to make sure they cook evenly for about 6 to 8 minutes.

Add the meatballs to the sauce and let it bubble for a further 10 minutes over a gentle heat.

Cook your spaghetti in salty water, drain and mix them well with the meatballs and the sauce. Serve warm with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and a drizzle of olive oil.