Meatballs: The Spuntino Way

Name: Meatballs: The Spuntino Way
Prep time: 45 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Global
Ingredients: 4 slices bread (2 packed cups worth); 118 milliliters dried bread crumbs; 4 larges eggs; 59 milliliters finely chopped flat-leaf parsley; 3 cloves garlic, minced; 907 grams ground beef; 59 milliliters grated Pecorino Romano, plus about 1 cup for serving; 15 turns white pepper; 59 milliliters pine nuts; 59 milliliters raisins; 2 teaspoons fine sea salt; 6 servings Tomato Sauce

Meatballs: The Spuntino Way might be just the main course you are searching for. One serving contains 623 calories, 37g of protein, and 39g of fat. This recipe serves 6. A mixture of flat-leaf parsley, turns pepper, garlic, and a handful of other ingredients are all it takes to make this recipe so scrumptious. To use up the bread you could follow this main course with the Coffee Cake Banana Bread as a dessert.

Instructions

Heat the oven to 325°F.

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Oven

Put the fresh bread in a bowl, cover it with water, and let it soak for a minute or so.

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Bread

Water

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Bowl

Pour off the water and wring out the bread, then crumble and tear it into tiny pieces.

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Bread

Water

Combine the bread with all the remaining ingredients except the tomato sauce in a medium mixing bowl, adding them in the order they are listed.

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Tomato Sauce

Bread

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Mixing Bowl

Add the dried bread crumbs last to adjust for wetness: the mixture should be moist wet, not sloppy wet.

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Breadcrumbs

Shape the meat mixture into handball-sized meatballs and space them evenly on a baking sheet.

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Meatballs

Meat

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Baking Sheet

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. The meatballs will be firm but still juicy and gently yielding when they're cooked through. (At this point, you can cool the meatballs and hold them in the refrigerator for as long as a couple of days or freeze them for the future.)

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Meatballs

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Oven

Meanwhile, heat the tomato sauce in a sauté pan large enough to accommodate the meatballs comfortably.

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Tomato Sauce

Meatballs

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Frying Pan

Dump the meatballs into the pan of sauce and nudge the heat up ever so slightly. Simmer the meatballs for half an hour or so (this isn't one of those cases where longer is better) so they can soak up some sauce. Keep them there until it's time to eat.

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Meatballs

Sauce

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Frying Pan

Serve the meatballs 3 to a person in a healthy helping of the red sauce, and hit everybody's portion—never the pan—with a fluffy mountain of grated cheese. Reserve the leftover tomato sauce (it will be super-extra-delicious) and use it anywhere tomato sauce is called for in this book.

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Tomato Sauce

Meatballs

Red Sauce

Cheese

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Frying Pan

Excerpted from The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan. Copyright © 2010 by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan. Published by Artisan Books, a division of Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

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Hot Dogs