Meatballs with Spaghetti and Spicy Tomato Sauce

We had an interesting trip to the butcher last week, we needed some beef mince to make something or other so the nice butcher man (who we think is called Paul though we are yet to confirm this) weighed it out and got on with finding the other things we needed. When he came to putting all our things together, the mince had disappeared. He then had to go and grind some more mince, and, because we’d had to wait, he kindly threw in some extra. When we got home we realised there was far too much for what we actually needed (I think it was for the cottage pie) so we divided it up and froze some.

While we were cooking up our Chinese New Year feast yesterday, we realised that that we didn’t have anything for this evening’s dinner; I like to cook something in advance on a Sunday so that we don’t have to worry too much when we get home from work on a Monday, going back to work after the weekend is stressful enough. We decided to use the mince in some meatballs.

We made them to the same recipe as last time (beef, onions, garlic, parsley, nutmeg, red wine and italian herbs) and then fried them off when we got home from work this evening. While they were browning, we made a spicy tomato sauce (shallots, garlic, chilli, red wine, tomatoes, tomato pureee, s&p, anchovy essence and parsley) and threw the meatballs into the sauce to finish cooking.

We served the meatballs and (very) spicy tomato sauce with some really good spaghetti (it was slightly fatter than normal and quite rough). It was brilliant.

Last time we made meatballs, we had enough left over to have the next day with cheese on toast, one of my favourite leftover meal experiences of all time; sadly, these were so good we only have two left. Stephen reckons he is going to have them on pancakes tomorrow…I think I might eat them when he’s not looking though 🙂

G