Spaghetti & Meatballs: new Recipe

With Fall weather comes the urge for roasts, pasta, braises, and LOTS of vegetables. Molly Wizenburg's writing in Bon Appetit makes me want to try everything she does. In this months issue, she writes about spaghetti and meatballs. I usually make my mom's version. For the sauce it's garlic, basil, tomatoes, and salt. We are of the no-onion sauce camp. For the meatballs it's all beef, progresso Italian bread crumbs (just a little), egg, and they are cooked stovetop in a pan, not in the sauce. This is the way I've always done it and I love it this way...it brings me to the memory of waking up to garlic and sauce on a Sunday morning. However, I also like a spongier meatball and it drives me nuts that my meatballs come out triangular from the pan fry and not round.

I decided to try Molly's version which is a sauce with not only onion but butter! I seriously don't need ANY more butter in my diet so I secretly hoped I wouldn't like the sauce. Her meatballs have an enormous amount of breadcrumbs and parmesean and more egg than I would normally use and they are a mix of beef and pork. You can see all the breadcrumb/parmesean in the raw meatballs below. This was a sure sign that they would be too bready. Actually, I was so scared of overmixing them (she said that was the key) that I probably erred on the side of less combining so I would say the bread is not as distributed as it could have been.

Anyway, final result is that I did like the sauce, but not as much as my usual which is ok with me. The meatballs were not distributed enough, but I do like the cooking of them in the sauce instead of frying...some of the meat moves into the sauce and makes a nice robust version. Finally, I do not usually eat spaghetti...the shape annoys me - all that splattering of sauce (you CANNOT cut your long pasta so it flies everywhere. just my opinion). With meatballs I like a penne type of noodle. I went with Rigatoni which was perfect.