Italian Night At Almost Heaven South

Bev and our neighbor Pat had seen a recipe for spaghetti and meatballs on the Today Show that they thought sounded very good so Bev decided to make it and invited her and Steve down to share it with us.

But before the pasta, we had an appetizer of fried green tomatoes, Italian style. using the recipe from Roz over at La Bella Vita Cucina – check out her site for the recipe. 

We followed the recipe as written except we cut them 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick and only single dipped them.  I pan fried them and they were crispy and delicious and this will be our go-to recipe from now on.  Steve doesn’t care for fried green tomatoes but ate two thanks to the dipping sauce – I think he would have eaten it with a spoon.  Thanks Roz.

Grandma Maroni's Spaghetti and Meatballs - LINK

Meatballs

1/2 pound ground chuck

1/2 pound ground pork

4 ounces dried bread crumbs

2 extra large eggs

2 ounces whole milk

6 ounces grated Romano

3 ounces grated Spanish onion

2 ounces finely diced fresh garlic

2 ounces finely chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves

2 ounces finely chopped fresh basil leaves

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Spray a baking sheet with olive oil cooking spray.

2. In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients. If the mixture seems a little loose, add more bread crumbs.

3. Loosely roll each meatball into about the size of a golf ball (ours are bigger) and place on the baking sheet. Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes.

Tomato Sauce

4 ounces olive oil

6 cloves garlic, finely minced

3 ounces onions, finely chopped

2 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes

10 basil leaves, thinly sliced

Salt and pepper

1 dash sugar (optional) (we omitted)

1. In a large pot, add the olive oil and garlic and cooker over medium-high heat until the garlic lightly browns.

2. Add the onions and cook for about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the crushed tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper. You can also add the optional sugar at this time if you like a sweeter sauce. 3. 3. Simmer for 15 to 25 minutes.

Bev made the meatballs a couple of days before but she only used about ½ oz of garlic and 4 oz of cheese and I thought they could have used more garlic, but they were still very cheesey and they were a little dry.  Bev thought too many bread crumbs but I did a search on the web and found another version on the Food Network with ingredients as follows:

1 pound ground chuck

4 ounces dried bread crumbs

4 large eggs

4 ounces whole milk

6 ounces grated Romano

3 ounces grated Spanish onion

2 ounces finely diced fresh garlic

2 ounces finely chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves

2 ounces finely chopped fresh basil leaves

Note that while the cheese and garlic are the same, there is double the amount of eggs and milk from the Today Show version, which will likely fix the dryness issue.  I'm not sure why the Today Show would alter Grandma Maroni's 100 year old recipe unless it was a mistake, but I found the second version on several sites and assume it is the correct one.  Next time we’ll follow the second version but cut the cheese and garlic some.  We like our meatballs more loose than solid and the texture of these was just about right.

We usually always serve this dish into individual bowls but this time we decided to serve it on a platter for a photo op.

After watching everyone struggle to get their serving from the platter, I’ll go back to our original method.  We all liked the sauce and Steve commented that he had eaten a lot of good meals at our house but this may have been the best ever – including the meatballs.  It’s always a feel good to get such a compliment.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

6/18/16 meal date