Nona's Pasta Sauce and Meatballs

Pasta is a classic comfort food, but the key to every great pasta dish a perfect red sauce. Growing up in my Italian family, weekend dinners were always some type of pasta dish involving a variation of my Nona's amazing red sauce. Because I was spoiled and always had homemade (never jarred!) marinara, I turned into somewhat of a sauce snob. I compare every sauce to my Nona's and nothing ever seems to compare. So what better recipe for my first blog entry than to share the recipe for the sauce you can eat like soup?

Simple Meatballs
Taken from the one and only, Nona

Ingredients:

1 pound of lean ground beef
1 cup grated parmesan cheese, grated or fresh
1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
3 cloves of fresh garlic
1/4 cup of olive oil - or enough to cover the bottom of a large frying pan

add more or less of parmesan and bread crumbs depending on personal taste

Directions:
 
1.) In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground beef, bread crumbs, and cheese.

2.) Mix the ingredients in the bowl with your hands thoroughly

3.) Roll golf ball size balls of the mixture in your hands until all of the meat is gone and place the meatballs on a separate plate

4.) Cover the bottom of a large frying pan generously with olive oil

5.) Add the meatballs to the pan and over low heat, brown them on all sides

While the meatballs are browning...

 Sauce

Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/4 cup olive oil - or enough to cover bottom of large frying pan
salt to taste
pepper to taste
2 cans Pastene Kitchen Ready Tomatoes
1 tablespoon parsley

Directions:

1.) In a large pot, empty the two cans of Pastene Kitchen Ready Tomatoes and rinse the cans with water, add the water to the sauce.

2.) Finish browning the meatballs, once they are brown on all sides add all of the meatballs and the olive oil from the pan into the pot of sauce.

4.) Place the pot over low heat to simmer, and cover.

5.) While the sauce is simmering, cover the bottom of the pan used to brown the meatballs with olive oil and add in the sliced garlic.

6.) Simmer the garlic in the oil until the garlic browns, then remove the garlic from the oil.

7.) Add the oil to the sauce followed by one tablespoon of salt to start, one teaspoon of pepper to start, and the parsley. Stir and cover the sauce.

8.) Let the sauce simmer for a minimum of one hour before serving, adding salt and pepper to taste as it cooks. The longer you can let the sauce sit the better it will taste.