Spaghetti Westerns with Stuffed Meatballs

Home alone for a day this weekend so I am going to take the opportunity to cook and watch movies that I can enjoy without having to consider the preferences of others.

The plan is to develop a new recipe (stuffed meatballs), watch some fun foreign films while Sharon is away. I other words, be a single guy.

The meatball recipe is from Jackie and John off the Williams-Sonoma website. The tomato sauce is the one I love from ATK. The films are from Italy.

For the meatballs I'll use my tomato sauce recipe and maybe even make some garlic bread.

The process began on Tuesday when I selected the theme for my lonely weekend, Spaghetti Westerns. I planed the menu at work and started real preparation Tuesday night by watching the first side (laser disk) of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West (1968). Henry Fonda plays the villain against Charles Bronson's harmonica playing "man with no name".

Friday after shopping and work we'll start off with a great salad and They Call Me Trinity. On a good day this film is humorous on a bad day silly if not stupid. I like to think of this kind of low budget quick production as a "bargain matinee" and just enjoy it for what it is without being critical. It's a film I would recommend to someone who has already seen the Sergio Leone westerns and doesn't mind wasting an afternoon on a marginally entertaining/juvenile matinee.

Saturday I'll continue with another Trinity film, My Name Is Nobody (1974), also staring Henry Fonda (his last western). MNIN is a continuation of the Trinity character played by the same actor, Terrance Hill. (The writeups I read about the Trinity films refer to Terence Hill as though he is well known but I don't know anything about him; is he Italian, has he done anything else, was there celluloid after Trinity?)

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Stuffed Meatballs

Ingredients

1/3 cup milk
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground veal
1 lb. ground beef
1/3 cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley, plus more for garnish
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 3/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1/3 lb. mozzarella or provolone cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Olive oil for frying
About 6 cups tomato sauce
2 lb. spaghetti, cooked and drained
Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese for serving

Preparation

1. In a large bowl, combine the milk and bread crumbs. Add the ground pork, veal, beef, the 1/3 cup parsley, the eggs, garlic, salt and pepper. Mix briefly with your hands. Form the mixture into 2-inch balls. Press a mozzarella cheese cube into the center of each ball, sealing it inside.
2. In a large electric skillet set on medium-high heat, heat 1/2 inch of oil until almost smoking. Add the meatballs and cook until browned, about 1 minute per side. Transfer to a paper towel-lined tray.
3. Discard the oil in the pan. Pour the tomato sauce into the pan and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Add the meatballs, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until cooked through, about 30 minutes. Uncover and cook for 10 minutes more.
4. Put the pasta in a warmed large, shallow bowl. Top with the sauce and meatballs and garnish with parsley. Serve immediately and pass the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese at the table. Serves 10 to 12.

The finished product. Serve with some garlic bread to sop up the wonderful sauce.

Post Script

Recipes are often used a guides as opposed to formula and today I had to make some modifications to what is suggested above.

1. Instead of 14 oz cans of tomatoes I used 28 oz cans
2. 9 gloves of garlic in the sauce
3. 3/4 teaspoon of red peppers in the sauce
4. only 1 bunch of basil, should of had 2 for this much
5. didn't have fresh parsley on my shopping list so couldn't use it
6. 2 tablespoons of kosher salt, this may have been a pinch to much
7. 4 eggs
8. unable to get veal so the meat was 2.64 lbs beef/pork 2:1 with 1 lb lamb
9. meatballs had 4 gloves of garlic

This made 22 meatballs with plenty of sauce. John and Jackie will receiver a 4 meatball takeaway on Monday because they gave me the recipe. Mahalo John.