Sunday Dinner - 06/20/10 (Father's Day Edition)

Just a to give you heads up, I didn't make the "healthy" meatballs. Nor is this a  quick cooking dish. This meals is for the Big Man on Father's Day. And I decided we could splurge and eat the the full fat and I could spend hours making meatballs. You can easily substitute ground turkey for the pork and sausage. 

Everyone in my family love Italian food. Whip up pasta and a sauce and they are happy campers. This meal can easily be doubled, freezes beautifully and can be made ahead.
This meal was actually made on Saturday since we'd be spending today at the in-laws 2hrs away. 

Spaghetti and Meatballs


Ingredients (Red Sauce)
1tbsp olive oil
1 cup onions,diced
1 1/2tsp chopped garlic
1/4tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomato
2 (15-ounce) cans tomato sauce
1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste
1/2tsp dried basil leaves
1/4tsp dried oregano leaves
Salt, to taste
ground black pepper, to taste


Ingredients (Meatballs)
1lb ground chuck
1lb fresh Italian Sausage
6 eggs
1cup onion, minced
1/4cup garlic, chopped
1/4cup basil, chopped
1 3/4cup Italian breadcrumbs
1/2cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsps salt
2 tbsps pepper

Directions (Red Sauce)
In a large heavy-bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until softened and translucent. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring, for 1min. Add the crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste.

Season the sauce with the basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.

Continue to simmer the red sauce over med-low for at least 1.5hrs. The longer the better.

Directions (Meatballs)
In a large mixing bowl, combine ground beef and ground pork, using your hands. Add eggs, onion, garlic, basil, breadcrumbs and cheese.

Again, using your hands, blend thoroughly. Season with salt and pepper. Roll the meatballs (MBs) into the desired size, 1in dia. Heat (medium) 2tbs of  olive oil in a large skillet. Add a few meatballs at a time. Be sure to leave enough space to turn the MBs .

 
Brown all sides of the MBs. Then transfer to a plate. Continue making MBs until all the meat mixture is used.  (Just a warning, this is time consuming.)

Add MBs to the red sauce and serve over pasta.

I hope you enjoy this dinner as much as I did. What did y'all have for dinner?


If you have any question/comments about this recipe, pls leave me a comment or email at megmehell at yahoo.

Happy Father's Day to the Big Man, Don (my daddy), and Pawpaw. 
I took a few pictures of the girls with their favorite men.

MM and Li playing my little ponies with Don

The Girls snuggling the Big Man

Sitting on Pawpaw after Father's Day lunch

Hope your weekend was good. How did you spend Father's Day?