Balls

Connie's meatballs for spaghetti(polpette alla napolitana/Manchesterford)

You will need:

• 1lb beef steak mince
• Half a medium-sized onion (grated)
• 1 large clove of garlic (crushed)
• 4tbsp homemade breadcrumbs
• A regg (medium)
• 1tsp (heaped) Italian seasoning
• 1tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin (I think she's having a laugh with this)
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Plain flour (for coating meaty balls)

You will have to:
Place beef into a large bowl, add the onions, garlic, herbs, nutmeg, cumin, seasoning, breadcrumbs and the egg (i.e. put everything - except the flour - into a bowl and mix it up with your hands!). If it looks and feels a bit too soggy, add some more breadcrumbs until the mixture is moist enough to bind, but not snotty.

Roll the gooeyness into balls of about 3cm diameter (1.5"), dip in flour to coat evenly and place on a temperature-resistant plate (we use a large metal dish). Once all the balls have been prepared, allow them to cool in the freezer for at least half an hour. They can be frozen and also cooked from frozen. Once they've frozen, they can be transferred to a freezer bag, fastened tightly and stored for a couple or so months in a 3 star freezer.


For a delish red sauce for pasta
Once firmed up by cooling, the meatballs can be cooked either in the oven (180°C) or in a pasta sauce on the stove top. Either way the sauce to cook them in consists of:

• 1 medium onion, chopped very finely
• 0,1 or 2 (or more, depending on preference) cloves of garlic, crushed

Oh for fuck's sake, every fucker knows how to make a red fucking sauce for pasta, you don't need me to tell you.

You don't? Jesus, bunch of uncivilised wankers!

• Onion, garlic (or not)
• Olive oil (enough to coat the bottom of a medium sized saucepan)
• Bit of chopped chilli (if you like it spicy)
• Dried mixed herbs (if you like)
• And/or fresh basil if you prefer
• 1 bottle passata rustica (that's the thick sieved tomatoes, rather than the stuff that looks like tomato juice) or a can of good quality chopped tomatoes (Napolina ones are great)
• Squirt/splodge tomato puree
• Salt and pepper

You do it this way:

1. Heat oil over a medium heat
2. Add onions and fry over a lowish heat until soft (don't be a wanker, don't burn them) if you're going to use a bit of chilli, add it at this point too
3. If you're using garlic, add it once the onions are soft and cook it for a couple or three minutes (don't burn this either or it'll taste shit)
4. If you're using dried herbs, add them now - chopped celery leaves are nice, add them now or with the chilli (or whenever the hell you like), but never use the stalks in a sauce because they never soften
5. Add the tomatoes
6. Add the tomato puree
7. Add the salt and pepper
8. Get it simmering, leave it until it's reduced to about 3/4 or a half the original volume, i.e, get rid of a load of the water out of it
9. Once it's ready add the basil - lots of it, torn

Decisions, decisions - stove top or oven?
The meatballs will cook perfectly happily if dumped into the saucepan with the simmering tomato sauce and left for a good 45 minutes. However, if they're not quite firm enough, they can be a bit fragile and they'll sometimes fall apart when you stir the pan - if you don't stir the pan, then can stick to the bottom.

Therefore, you can cook them with some of the sauce in the oven. You know how they were put in the freezer on a temperature resistant plate/dish? Well, if you cover them with a good amount of the tomato sauce and cover the dish with foil, you can cook them in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 45min. You might need to check that they don't stick to the dish, but this is a really good way of cooking them and the flavour is a little more intense than cooking them in the sauce on the stove. Once they're done, dump them and the sauce in with the rest of the sauce in the saucepan.

You have to eat meatballs with spaghetti - no other pasta is compatible. And make sure you salt the water or else the pasta will taste completely crap.

You won't enjoy this if you have to sit at the same table as my dad while he's eating it.


Marinara? Bollocks!
According to Italians (well, my dad), a marinara sauce is one that contains seafood, a pescatore sauce contains fish. A sauce that contains neither of these, but consists of tomatoes and other shit is a neapolitan sauce, or just a pasta sauce. Meatballs marinara my arse, just sounds wrong to me and I'd expect there to be mussels, prawns and squid in a sauce with that name . You ask for a marinara pizza, what you expect? Seafood. If you got a frigging margherita, you'd be right arsed off.

Then again, I'd be really fucked off if there were pieces of coal in a carbonara sauce... but I wouldn't order a carbonara, so it's irrelevant.