Meatball Parmesan

I was so busy getting this on the table, I neglected
to get a picture before guests dug into it.

I made an awesome Meatball Parmesan dish the other night for six. It was a combination of two recipes that I happened upon, a wonderful serendipity of my reading appetite.

The first recipe I stumbled upon was this one -- from an Esquire magazine article entitled “The meatball recipe to conquer all others.” Now, who wouldn’t be attracted to a headline like that?

And it is indeed quite the fantastic meatball, made from not one, not two, not three, but six different meats, at least in the version I created.

The recipe, as you’ll see when you click into it, calls for a pound of ground beef, a pound of ground veal, a pound of ground pork, and either a pound of pancetta (an Italian bacon made of pork belly meat) or a pound of cured bacon. I chose to use a half a pound of the pancetta and a half a pound of the bacon.

The other recipe I happened up was in the New York Times for Meatball Parmesan. The recipe is here.

What I did was to substitute the NYT meatballs for the Esquire meatballs.

And, though I have my own red sauce recipe, I did use the NYT recipe for the sauce.

I served it with penne pasta and salad.

This was almost an all-day affair in the kitchen. I started at 11:30 a.m. with the prep of the meatballs, and I was in and out of the kitchen until everyone was assembled for dinner at about 6 p.m.

It was a lot of work, but well worth the effort.

Meaty Penne

First off let me say that my cooking game has been way off over the last several weeks. It’s not that I’ve stopped eating, certainly, it’s just that my effort to record some of what I’ve eaten for Eats@Home has been undermined by some changing circumstances in my professional and personal lives.

That said, here is a recipe for Meaty Penne from Giada De Laurentiis that caught my eye.

On Fathers Day, I was lounging with my daughter Elizabeth in the Connecticut home she and her husband John recently bought. She lounges by watching the Food Network (like father like daughter) and Giada was putting together this wonderfully rich red sauce that included chorizo sausage and Genoa salami.

“I’ve got to try that,” I said to Elizabeth.

The combination of the cherizo (a Portuguese pork sausage) and the salami caught my attention, but so did the mix of carrot with onion, as well as the topping of arugula that wilted into the steaming mass of cooked penne and red sauce.

A note about the arugula: Known for its pungent, peppery flavor it is a classic topping in traditional northern Italian dishes. But it’s strong and can be a put-off to some people. I’d suggest spinach as a substitute for those folks. Also, I added a diced green pepper to this dish - can never have too much green.

Here it is courtesy of and as prepared by Giada:

Ingredients
1 pound fresh chorizo sausage, casing removed
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped (about 2/3 cup)
1 large celery stalk, finely chopped (about 2/3 cup)
1 small onion, finely chopped (about 1 1/4 cups)
One 3-ounce piece Genoa salami, diced
One 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 1/2 cups baby arugula
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil
1 pound penne rigate pasta
1 cup finely grated Parmesan

Directions
In a large nonstick skillet, cook the chorizo over medium-high heat until cooked through, breaking up the chorizo into 1/3- to 1/2-inch pieces with a wooden spoon, 12 to 14 minutes. Drain on paper towels and cool.

Heat the oil in the same skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, carrots, celery and onions. Cook until the vegetables are tender but not at all brown, stirring often, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the salami and tomatoes. Bring the sauce to a simmer. Cover, reduce the heat to low and cook gently until the flavors blend, stirring occasionally, 15 to 20 minutes. Season with the 1/4 teaspoon salt and the pepper. Remove the skillet from the heat and add the arugula and basil. Stir until wilted.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain and reserve about 1 cup of the pasta water. Place the pasta into a serving dish.

Add the chorizo sauce to the pasta. Toss to combine, adding the reserved pasta water, if needed, to loosen the sauce.

Top with the Parmesan and serve.

Here’s a printable form of the recipe.

Speedy Pasta In A Pan

By Paul Briand

I’m a news hound, and I have a variety of apps on my BlackBerry smartphone and my Apple iPod Touch to browse headlines and read stories.

I’m also a recipe hound. And there’s an app for that too: Foodily.

I’ve been using the Foodily app on my iPod Touch for a few weeks. Foodily compiles recipes, and, if you see one you like, it connects you to its original source. I recently connected with this recipe for Speedy Pasta In A Pan.

It worked out well, and gives me yet another source of recipes to satisfy my need to find something interesting, something fun to cook and eat at home.

Note: When it says use large skillet, use a very large skillet. You may even want to use a pot. This recipe creates a pretty good sized bulk of sauce, pasta and cheese.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 14-ounce can organic, diced tomatoes, undrained

1 tablespoon each chopped fresh basil and oregano

1 pound fresh or defrosted frozen cheese ravioli

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

3 cups tomato sauce, homemade or store-bought

8 slices fresh mozzarella, or 3 cups shredded mozzarella

Directions

1. Heat a large nonstick pan and drizzle in the olive oil. Over medium heat, sauté the onion and garlic until golden;

2. Add the diced tomatoes, basil, and oregano. Stir and simmer for 5 minutes;

3. Remove half the tomato mixture and set aside;

4. Top the tomatoes in the pot with a layer of uncooked ravioli, then a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, a cup of the tomato sauce, and the remaining tomato mixture;

5. Nestle the last raviolis into the pan, topping with the tomato sauce and the mozzarella;

6. Cover the pan with a lid or a layer of foil and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes;

7. Let the dish relax off the heat for a few minutes to let everything settle before serving.

Click here for recipe card.

Red Sauce with Sausage

By Paul Briand

Everyone should have a red sauce at their disposal for home cooking. There's no need, frankly, to depend on Ragu or any other canned or bottled brand when there are a lot of people to feed and the menu calls for a hearty red sauce with your favorite kind of pasta.

My red sauce comes from an amalgamation of influences -- from my mother (and her ethnic mix of Italian and Ukrainian), my sister Margaret, a girl I dated a while ago, from reading cookbooks and from a bit of experimenting on my part. In other words, when it comes to eating at various homes over the years I've paid attention, absorbed hints and bits of data, churned them up and made them my own.

Besides the ingredients, what I like to absorb from good cooks is technique. For example, I picked up a technique for cooking the Italian sausage from a Silver Palette cookbook my mother gave me for Christmas in 1999. It recommended pricking the sausage with a fork and boiling them in a large pot or skillet in about a half inch of water over medium/high heat. Then let the water boil away and continue to cook the sausage until brown on all sides. Remove the sausage to a plate, discard the fat, but don't clean the pot/skillet. Add some olive oil and use that accumulated goodness at the bottom of the pot to then start preparing the sauce itself.

The other technique that I picked up but don't necessarily use is the addition of a little sugar to, obviously, sweeten up the red sauce. And the aforementioned bygone girlfriend also shredded some carrot into her sauce to reduce the acidity of the tomatoes.

As for the sausages I like to mix sweet with hot -- I buy a package of each. It creates a surprise in every bite -- sometimes tangy, sometimes not. I also substitute the sausage on occasion with ground beef or ground turkey, depending on my level of nutritional guilt at any one time.

Ingredients
2 - 2 1/4 pounds of Italian sausage (half sweet, half hot)
3-4 cloves garlic, mashed
Green pepper, sliced
Vadalia onion, sliced
8 ounce package of sliced mushrooms
28 ounce can kitchen ready tomatoes
29 ounce can tomato sauce
12 ounce can tomato paste
Cup of red wine
Parsley, oregano, sage, basil - a tbsp of each

Directions
1) Cook sausage in large pot or skillet as described above -- prick links with a fork, boil in about half inch water over medium/high heat, let the water boil away then continue to brown sausage on all sides. Set sausage aside, drain fat but don't clean the pot/skillet;
2) Add olive oil, and sautee garlic, pepper, and onions 3 minutes;
3) Add mushrooms and cook mixture another 2 minutes;
4) Add kitchen ready tomatoes and tomato sauce and give a good stir;
5) Add tomato paste and give another good stir to get the paste well into the sauce;
6) Add the red wine and add the parley, oregano, sage and basil;
7) Stir and reduce to a simmer.

Now, I'm sure you've heard it said that the sauce should simmer just about all day. I say, "Fuggedaboutit!" A half hour, 45 minutes tops of simmering and stirring and you'll be good to go. Cook your favorite pasta and toss a salad. One note about the salad: In my mom's kitchen we never, ever had tomatoes in the salad on the nights she served spaghetti and sauce. Too much tomato, she said. I still hold that as sacred today.