Indulge At Home This Valentine’s Day: Pasta And Meatballs

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Let me start with this: I am not trying to be controversial when I say it’s a good idea to stay home on Valentine’s Day.

The effort you put into this simple and satisfying dinner will be worth more than a night out on the town.

Your sweetheart can cozy up to a good book or the next episode with a fuzzy blanket as you fill your home with the aromatics of a true Italian meal.

It’s almost the middle of February, which means that winter’s on its way out, so what better time than now to make pasta with polpette al sugo to warm up your loved ones and show that you care.

Recipe: The Family Sauce

Start this recipe with an Italian soffritto, an aromatic flavor base of onions, carrots and celery, cooked in olive oil until soft. Once you get the hang of making it, you can use it as a starting point for many soups and sauces.

Next, I recommend a high quality Italian pasta for this meal. Look for bronze-cut (or bronze-die) pasta to elevate your dish, as its texture allows for sauces to stick for a delicious dining experience. Supermarket brands are available or go to your nearest Italian market.

Finally, a quick reminder about investing in good cheeses when you’re making Italian recipes. Growing up, we’d walk to Labriola’s Market, just outside of the city of Pittsburgh, to buy clear, plastic containers filled with freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese – and believe me – we added it to everything. Today, I buy a chunk of it at my local cheese shop and grate it myself onto sauces, soups and salads. There’s a discernable difference and it’s worth the extra cost.

You can get the ingredients for the meatballs here.

W​hen you roll meatballs for this recipe, make them 1 to 2 inches in diameter. Place them in a large skillet with a little extra virgin olive oil and a clove of garlic over medium heat until the meatballs are browned on all sides. Set them aside to drain oil onto a paper towel and then add them to the sauce at least an hour before you serve the dish. You can toss the whole, charred garlic clove into the sauce as well.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 garlic clove, whole
• 1 stalk of celery, finely chopped
• 1 carrot, finely chopped
• 2 cans imported San Marzano plum tomatoes
• ½ can of tomato paste
• 1 bay leaf
• Salt, pepper, parsley, basil
• ¼ cup Pecorino Romano cheese, grated
• 1 pound of pasta
• 1 pound sweet italian sausage
• Meatballs (ingredients found here)

Instructions:

Step 1:

In a large sauce pan on medium heat, sauté onion, minced garlic, celery and carrot in ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil (the soffritto) until tender and fragrant.

Step 2:

In a large sauté pan on medium heat, add the remaining extra virgin olive oil and the whole clove of garlic until hot.

Step 3:

Place sausage in sauté pan and cook until brown.

Pulse tomatoes in blender for a short time and add to large sauce pan when soffritto is tender.

Step 5:

Toss in a scoop or two of tomato paste.

Step 6:

Add salt, pepper, parsley, basil to sauce and cook over medium low heat until sauce starts to thicken.

Step 7:

Cut sausage up into individual pieces and add to sauce.

Step 8:

Add oil and garlic from sausage sauté pan to sauce.

Step 9:

Add meatballs (if you have made them) and simmer the sauce for at least an hour, but the whole thing can bubble away for half the day if you wish.

Step 10:

Cook pasta al dente according to package directions.

Step 11:

Serve with grated cheese.