Abruzzo Style Spaghetti with Meatballs

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Today I am finally publishing first recipe of Lucia's which brought her the first prize in a local competition: Abruzzo Style Spaghetti with Meatballs.

I told you already how to prepare fresh spaghetti and Lucia's tomato sauce with mixed meat in my previous posts from the series "Recipes of Italian Cuisine with Lucia". Today at last we are going to prepare the meatballs, cook pasta and serve. 

But before to proceed with the recipe let me share a few tips:

• To save time, you can prepare fresh egg pasta dough as first thing and let it rest.
• Secondly, you can start preparing Lucia's Tomato Sauce with Mixed Meat which requires some long cooking time.
• While having your tomato sauce cooked, you can prepare fresh pasta spaghetti and meatballs.

We prepared our spaghetti, sauce and meatballs the day before. 


Ingredients for Abruzzo Style Spaghetti with Meatballs:

Spaghetti alla chitarra or tagliatelle (cut as thin strips)
Lucia's Tomato Sauce with Mixed Meat
Meatballs in Sauce
Grated parmesan


Ingredients for Meatballs:

1 egg
200 g minced meat
Salt
10 g grated parmesan
Zest of 1/5 peel of a lemon
Black pepper (optional)
5 g bread crumbs (if needed)

Olive oil

Preparing Meatballs:

• Beat egg a little with a fork. Add minced meat, parmesan, salt, pepper, lemon zest and mix all. If you think it is needed, add very little breadcrumbs. Let it rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.

• Oil a large pan. Grab a piece of mince. Get very small pieces, roll them with your index finger on your palm into tiny meatballs and place in the pan.

• Cook meatballs a couple of minutes by turning them frequently enough so that they would cook evenly all over. Remember that since they are small they are cooked pretty fast.

• Transfer meatballs into a small pot. 

• In the pot with meatballs add about 8 - 9 tbsps of the Lucia's Tomato Sauce which you previously prepared. Cook a few minutes.

Last Stage: Cooking Pasta:

• Warm the remaining tomato sauce in a large pan.
• Cook spaghetti in salted boiling water. (Fresh spaghetti requires quite a short cooking time. When the water starts boiling up again your spaghetti higly probably are already cooked)

• Drain and transfer spaghetti over Lucia's Tomato Sauce. Mix gently so that the sauce is distributed evenly.

• Serve into the plates. 

• Add meatballs over spaghetti.

• Sprinkle with grated parmesan.

Enjoy....


Note: It is important to serve and eat pasta instantly.