Spaghetti and Meatballs

I have a list of foods that I do not, under any circumstances, cook.

Mostly, it’s because I had a poor experience making them when I first started cooking in Toronto: hamburgers, latkes, wheatberries, meatballs.

For a little while, tomato sauce was on this list: I couldn’t help making it taste sour.

But tomato sauce came off the list, and now, spaghetti and meatballs are off the list as well.

Spaghetti and meatballs is one of my true comfort meals: something that I wish I had around all the time in case I was in a bad mood and just needed a big bowl of something awesome. My mom’s meatballs, truthfully, are not the best I’ve ever had. The best I’ve ever had were eaten at Carmine’s, a New York institution, where the portions are much larger than any human should ever even attempt to eat, but the food is so tasty that you end up trying anyway.

These meatballs were fall-apart tender and moist, almost braised in a bright red, perfectly flavorful tomato sauce. In keeping with the theme of large portions, Carmine’s meatballs are massive, about the size of a softball. They’re my ultimate meatball, and I spent many evenings in Toronto on the phone with my mother trying to figure out how to make my meatballs taste like that. Instead, I always ended up with hard craters that had huge chunks of onion sticking out of them that fall apart, but not in the good way: mine crumble.

I had resigned myself to being a horrid meatball maker, counting down the days until the next time I could visit Carmine’s and have one of their pillowy meatballs… until I saw this.

I had made the Bolognese sauce at FX Cuisine before and swooned. It was everything a Bolognese sauce should be. When I saw the recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, I considered it: could it be? Could I maybe make a meatball that even came close to the Holy Grail of a Carmine’s meatball?

Alas, there was no real recipe, and I almost decided against it, but then… the leftover meat from the Daring Bakers’ lasagna was still sitting in my fridge waiting to be used… so I went for it.

And I’m so glad I did. These meatballs are everything you could ask for in a meatball and more: they’re light, melt-in-your-mouth tender, and perfectly flavorful and delicious. The real key is the milk-soaked bread. If I didn’t know it was there, I wouldn’t have been able to pick it out, but I know that those little pockets of moisture came from that.

They’re not the softballs of Carmine’s, but, in my opinion, they were just as delicious.

I’ve assembled a more exact recipe from the guidelines provided at FX Cuisine. Whether you decide to go with his recipe or mine, these meatballs are definitely worth trying.

Spaghetti and Meatballs (adapted from FX Cuisine)

1 tbsp. olive oil
350 gm 20% fat raw ground beef
130 gm Italian sausage
260 gm raw veal, sliced into strips
1 slice bread (I used a quarter of a loaf of French bread), very dry and stale
milk
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg
1 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 clove garlic, minced
1 28 oz. can whole tomatoes
700 gm passata
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot, and add the veal. Brown on all sides evenly, and then add the tomatoes and passata, adding salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cook on a low temperature, uncovered, while you prepare the meatballs.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Soak the bread in milk, a few tablespoons at a time, until soggy and falling apart. Into the same bowl, add the ground beef, sausage, cheese, egg, basil, oregano and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Combine with your hands, handling the meat as gently as possible, working all the ingredients together.

Using one hand, portion out a small amount of the meat: about the size of a golf ball. Gently work it into a sphere and place it on a greased baking sheet. Continue this way until all the meat is used up: I ended up with twenty meatballs. Place the sheet in the oven, and bake until just browned on the outside, about ten minutes.

Using a spoon, gently lower the meatballs into the sauce. Allow to cook until cooked through, anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes. Serve over freshly cooked pasta with extra parmesan cheese for sprinkling.