Interlude: Meatballs & Marinara

For a litany of reasons, New Year’s Day and Italian comfort food are the perfect pairing.

• Problem: It’s freezing outside
• Problem: You’re trapped in the house because everywhere else is closed for the holiday
• Problem: Your stomach is a little bubbly from last night’s festivities and in dire need of soothing
• Problem: You cannot in good, sober, “New-Year-New-Me” conscience bring yourself to order a $45 delivery burrito on UberEats

Solution: Use your forced downtime to cook up meatballs, marinara sauce, and your favorite pasta — a dish that simultaneously warms your heart, cures your hangover*, and isn’t too rough on the bank account.

*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

Ready to cook?

For this recipe, you’ll need a large braiser pan and an immersion blender. If you don’t have either of those, use an oven-safe casserole dish + classic soup pot with a lid for the sauce, and a regular blender in place of the immersion blender.

Ingredients:

For the marinara sauce:

• 2lbs campari tomatoes, halved (for larger ones, quartered); keep all the seeds
• 1.5 red bell peppers, quartered (seeds and white pith removed)
• 5 small or 3 medium shallots, sliced
• 8 garlic gloves, sliced
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 3 tsp dried oregano
• 2 tbsp celery leaves, chopped (instead of celery sticks, buy an entire “head” of celery that’s connected at the bottom and use the leaves at the center of the bunch)
• 1 tbsp cracked red pepper (skip this if you don’t want a spicy sauce)
• 6-8 tinned anchovies
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp honey
• high-quality olive oil (around 1/2 cup in total)
• 2 cans plain tomato sauce
• Better Than Bouillon or kosher salt, to taste

For the meatballs:

• 1 lb ground beef (92% lean)
• 1 lb ground pork
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup Italian style breadcrumbs
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 5 garlic cloves, grated
• 2 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp black pepper
• 4 tbsp chopped parsley
• 2 tsp Italian seasoning

Instructions:

Marinara Recipe:

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of the braiser pan or casserole dish and then add the halved tomatoes, quartered red peppers, sliced shallots, and garlic cloves. Make sure that the vegetables are nestled together pretty tightly in the bottom of the pan, but without the tomatoes or peppers being heaped on top of each other. You want one single layer of vegetables that slightly overlaps!
3. Sprinkle the chopped basil evenly over the layer of vegetables, and repeat with the oregano, celery leaves, and cracked red pepper.
4. Add the anchovies (you can cut them in half) and a light sprinkle of salt, then drizzle the honey and a generous amount of olive oil over all of the ingredients.
5. Pop the pan in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes (while it cooks, prep the meatballs!). The vegetables should be soft and the shallots should start browning and crisping at the edges.
6. Remove the pan from the oven and allow the mixture to cool slightly. If you have an immersion blender, you can either pulse the cooked veggies into a sauce right there in the pan, or you can transfer a few cups at a time to a separate container and do your blending there. If using a traditional blender, do so in batches.
7. If using a braiser pan, return the blended sauce to the pan and then cook on the stovetop over low heat without covering for 1-2 minutes. If using a casserole dish, transfer the sauce to a soup pot.
8. Once the mixture is softly bubbling, pour in the two cans of tomato sauce and stir well (or immersion blend again). Taste the sauce to see if it needs more salt, and if so, add the bouillon or kosher salt.

Meatballs Recipe:

1. Set the oven to broil.
2. Add the ground pork and ground beef to a large mix bowl and mix with hands until well combined. Add in the remainder of the ingredients and then mix until all non-meat ingredients are even distributed.
3. Lightly grease an oven safe tray with olive oil and roll the meat mixture into balls that are slightly smaller than baseballs. When placing the meatballs on the tray, it’s okay to crowd them close together, but make sure they don’t touch each other.
4. Broil the meatballs for 12 minutes with the tray placed on the middle rack of the oven (not directly under the broiler!!), until beginning to brown. Immediately remove the meatballs from the tray once browned and add them to the sauce.
5. Bring the sauce to a low simmer, then cover with a lid. Cook for 30 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure that the sauce isn’t overly thickening. While the meatballs cook in the sauce, prepare pasta of your choice according to instructions.

Credits: I found this recipe for roasted tomato sauce from The Burned Butter Table a few years ago and have been screwing around** with it ever since.

** “screwing around,” a phrase which here means “deleting all traces of dairy and cramming in copious amounts of herbs.”