Meatballs with angel hair pasta

I learned something from the last COVID lockdown – I need to keep myself busy or there is a real risk of me spending ALL of my time watching various streaming channels. To that end, I am going to use the time to try some new recipes and post them onto this blog for you to try yourselves. I’m NOT a professionally trained cook. If I can manage it, anyone can.

My favourite pastas involve a Napoletana sauce. The flavour it infuses into the meat is just heart warming in my opinion. So for today’s post I humbly submit to you -Meatballs with anger hair pasta in Napoletana sauce.

For this recipe you will need:

Meatballs
Angel hair pasta
Can of diced tomatoes
Red wine
Red onion
2 cloves of garlic
1-2 birds eye chilis
your preferred cheese to top it off
Oregano
Salt
Pepper

Making the sauce

In the frypan, chop up 1-2 slices of red onion, 2 cloves of garlic and 1-2 chilis (depending on how hot you like it). Fry them in a few splashes of olive oil (I actually used garlic infused olive oil) for about 10 mins or until the onion starts to go translucent. Deglaze the ingredients with a splash of red wine.

Once that is done, in a blender, add in a few shakes of oregano, a small pour of olive oil, a generous pour of the same red wine ( I just used some leftover Sangiovese that I had lying around), a can of diced tomatoes and your prepared garlic, onion and chili mix.

Pulse it all in the blender (lid on with hand on top) until the mixture is smooth. You are looking for smooth and combined – not liquid.

The pasta

This part is easy. Boil a pot of water. Before adding the pasta, add in a few pinches of salt. It stops the pasta from clumping together.

The meatballs

In the same frypan from earlier, add the meatballs. This will infuse the meatballs with the same flavour as the sauce. Make sure the frypan is set on low-medium. You don’t want the meatballs to cook too fast, otherwise the outside will become burned while the inside remains raw. To avoid this issue and to make the meat chunks more edible, I chop the meatballs in half. Fry up the meatballs until mostly cooked inside and out.

The pasta only requires 3 mins to cook in the water. When the pasta is ready, drain the pasta but don’t discard all of the water.

Add a few spoonful’s of the water from the pasta to the meatballs and the sauce you prepared earlier. The simmer sauce will cook the meatballs the rest of the way through.