Spaghetti and Meatballs

I didn’t post once between December 20th, the day before I left Paris, and January 4th, several days after I got back, and yet there were nearly two weeks (a bit less, thanks to grève) in there that I spent in my childhood home on Long Island, side-by-side with my sisters and my brother again

After boarding school and college, I had gotten used to our twice-a-year visits, the bursting through the front door sometime after nightfall and being attacked first by the older of my two younger sisters–the Actress–who squealed and wrapped her impossibly long limbs around me and praised every item of clothing and everything about me down to my eyeliner. My brother would wait nearby for her antics to be over, roll his eyes a little bit, and then saunter over to hug me just tight enough so that my feet come off the floor ever-so-slightly. In more recent years, it’s my brother who comes to the airport to fetch me, but even without the Actress, his welcome-home-hug is always slow. I like it that way. My little sister goes last–for some reason, things so frequently happen in birth order in our house, though it’s not the way we planned. She’s taller than I am now, but I still feel like I’m hugging my baby sister, even though I can hardly get my chin on her shoulder.

The first night home is always made special by a meal request; it was my favorite thing in high school, when I came back from cafeteria food. Now it’s harder to decide what I want, knowing I’ll be tired and have airplane all over me, but the smells of whatever comfort food I’ve randomly chosen always waft out of the pots that my mother is carefully stirring, waiting for me to come stand over her shoulder and ask for a taste.

This trip home was different… I’m not too sure why. Maybe it’s because I don’t have Skype anymore, so I’ve hardly talked to anyone at home (except, oddly enough, my baby sister, who has become my family porte-parole due to our mutual addiction to Facebook chat). Maybe it’s because this decision to move to France was made so quickly. Or maybe it’s because last year, when I was living at home all the time for four months, we got used to being around each other, and going back to the old status quo is strange. I don’t know how they feel, but I couldn’t decide what I thought of no longer having the role I assumed so many years ago, the role of outsider, the role of temporary family member, filling a seat at the dinner table for a few weeks of the year before disappearing again.

I don’t mean any of this to sound melancholy. As soon as I got back home, it was like falling back into place–it always has been. The morning after my late arrival from a layover in Chicago and homemade stuffed shells and Christmas carols on the stereo, the four of us piled into my mother’s car and drove to the mall in Riverhead. As the Actress and I sat behind my baby sister navigating and my baby brother driving–somehow we all agreed silently that he would drive, though the baby and I can as well, I remember thinking that this was quite possibly our only venture as the four of us alone, without parental supervision. The baby is seventeen, so it was a strange thought, but whether it be because of my half-glimpses of everyone else slowly growing up over the years or because of the fact that, no matter who you are, adulthood comes too fast, I couldn’t help but think that soon there would be one of those delightfully explosive fights that are a wonder to witness as long as you’re not a part of it.

I cringed slightly when my brother lashed out at my baby sister for just a moment, but as soon as he found his way back onto the highway, he reached over good-naturedly for a one-armed hug, and I realized, for just a moment, that we’ve finally grown into one another. The gaggle of children that were in the house I left when I was 14 grew up; the four months I spent at home last year were just enough for me to be able to be a part of it. My job that kept me in New York, the sacrifice of Argentina… I can’t help but feel that it was all part of some cosmic plan. I don’t put a lot of credit into ideas like that, but there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation for how perfect things are between us, for how perfect I hope they’ll stay.

My brother came to visit me in Cannes for two weeks last summer. Both of my sisters plan on coming to Paris within the year. When they come, maybe I’ll make them homecoming food; there’s little better in my eyes than the smell of tomatoes and garlic simmering on the stovetop. It’s the smell of home.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

For the sauce:
1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
1 800 g. bottle passata
salt to taste

For the meatballs:
1 slice stale or dry white bread
1/2 cup milk
300 g. 80% lean beef
150 g. Italian sausage (I used chicken sausage), removed from casing
100 g. lardons
1 egg
2 tbsp. parmesan cheese
1 tbsp. dried basil
1 onion, grated
1 clove garlic, grated
1 tsp. olive oil

For the spaghetti:
500 g. spaghetti (about 1 pound)

Combine the sauce ingredients in a large, heavy bottomed saucepan. Simmer for 30 minutes, then use an immersion blender to purée until smooth. Keep the sauce at a low simmer.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Soak the slice of bread in milk for about 15 minutes, or until soft. In a large bowl, combine the beef, sausage and lardons using chopping motions with a wooden spoon. Create a well in the meat mixture and add the egg, parmesan, basil, onion, garlic and oil. Mush up the bread in the milk until it becomes a paste, and add this to the well.

Using long, sweeping motions, bring the meat mixture together with a wooden spoon until just combined.

Line a baking sheet with tinfoil.

Using a large spoon as a guide, make small meatballs about the size of a golfball. Bake the meatballs in batches until browned, and add the baked meatballs, including the juices that collect in the pan, to the sauce. Handle them as little as possible.

When all of the meatballs have been added to the sauce, cover and reduce heat. Cook for 20 minutes and up to 2 hours.

When ready to serve, bring a large pot of boiling water to a boil. Cook the spaghetti according to package directions. Reserve a bit of the starchy pasta water. Toss the spaghetti with some of the sauce, leaving the meatballs behind. Add pasta water if needed.

Serve on a large platter, topping the spaghetti with the meatballs.