We really love pasta and meatballs, but I’ve never made meatballs from scratch. Have I done meatballs in grape jelly and BBQ sauce in the crockpot for staff functions? Absolutely. Since I’ve been making more of our food from scratch now, especially on the weekends, I decided to give meatballs a go. I found a solid base recipe to go off of, and then tweaked it to what our Whole Foods had in stock. We had also spent the morning watching “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” on Netflix, which led me to salt my meat ahead of time and let it sit. We found a really good kosher salt at Whole Foods that I absolutely love, and drastically prefer over table salt, so I used that on the meat instead! I totally sound like your stereotypical California person with my Whole Foods talk, but they have a great butcher section and I’m not mad about it.

Meatballs

• 1 lb ground chuck
• 1 lb ground lamb
• salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 4 slices of good white bread, no crusts
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp marmite (we used miso paste instead, because we had it!)
• 1 tbsp anchovy paste
• 2 large eggs
• 3 oz parmigiano-reggiano
• 6 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup parsley
• 1 1/2 cup oil

Mix your chuck and lamb up with a tbsp of salt, and let it sit for about 30 minutes. While that does it’s thing, combine your bread and buttermilk for about 20 minutes. I put my buttermilk in a bowl, and then soaked each bread piece in it, and rotated through the pieces every few minutes so the buttermilk got to spread.

Once your meat has hung out, add the soy sauce, miso paste, 1.5 tsp anchovy paste, eggs, cheese, half the garlic, parsley, and your bread (and buttermilk). Mix it all together by hand. To taste for seasoning, pull off a little piece and microwave it! It worked surprisingly well, although my husband wouldn’t touch it.
Using your hands, roll out a billion (it feels like!) meatballs, about 1 1/2 inch in diameter and put them in the fridge until your ready to cook them. They don’t take long!

Sauce

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 onion, diced
• 1.5 tsp anchovy paste
• 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• three 28-oz whole tomatoes, crushed by hand in a big bowl
• 1/4 cup fresh basil
• Fresh parmigiano-reggiano
• 1 lb pasta (we used capillini, but it’s what we had!)

This sauce is crazy easy. Get your boiler going with super salty water, for your pasta. While that is coming to a boil, heat some oil in a Dutch oven and crush 4 raw meatballs in the bottom. Give them a few minutes to cook, don’t stir! After the bottom is brown, break it up and add your butter and onions. Stir until they are soft and see-through. Add the other half of your garlic, oregano, anchovy paste, and pepper flakes until your kitchen smells good! Go ahead and add your tomatoes and simmer for an hour. At about the 45 minute mark, I added in my basil.

While the sauce simmers, heat your vegetable oil in a pan until it’s super hot. Put 1/3 of your meatballs in the oil, and let it cook for a minute or so on one side, and then flip over. Because the oil temp has reduced, it will take longer on that side! Our meat thermometer was broken during this time, so we had to break them open a million times, but they got done! They should be brown and crispy, but not burnt, on both sides. Let the oil heat back up between batches. Drain them on a plate with a papertowel.

When the sauce is done, put your meatballs back in the Dutch oven on low, and transfer half your sauce over to it. The other half of the sauce should combine with your noodles. Make sure you add some of your pasta water. Good pasta ethics and all. When you’re ready, combine in a bowl your pasta and meatballs, cover in cheese and fresh basil, and dig in!

Grenach

This month is super red heavy, which is so tough for me. Especially considering the hoops it’s taking to get my headache medicine, but that’s another story! This weeks wine smelled so good, like leather and red fruit. Which means…headache. After a glass, I was pretty done. It definitely needed to be eaten with a high fat meal, which is why we went meatballs. It did pair really well with them! It also tasted a little less acidic after it had sat open and breathed for a while, which was a pleasant surprise!