Balls of Meat

a tomato sauce, really, but with a dagwood style twist.

the necessities (flexible).

• 2 pots, both large.
• 1 large frying pan
• cans of tomatoes, as many as your pot can hold
• onions. lots, sliced.
• garlic. again, lots, sliced or crushed. start with at least half of a head, and go up from there.
• olive oil. for cooking
• carrots (optional) but sliced
• celery (optional) but sliced
• peppers (a nice touch)
• ground pepper
• wine, for cooking.
• meat - try combinations of pork beef and veal. at least 3 or 4 pounds.
• eggs. 2 or three
• milk. to go with the eggs
• breadcrumbs. flour or cornstarch might be acceptable substitutes.
• anything else that you can imagine in a tomato sauce. consider broccoli, spices, sundried tomatoes. . . .

general directions

1. add olive oil to the pot, saute onions, garlic, (shallots, if you want) until everything smells good and the onions appear to have lost some of their bite
2. put meat, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs into one large bowl. mix with hands until all the non-meat is ground into the meat. form large meatballs (i've had a lot of luck using small grapefruits as my size guideline). under no circumstances should you be able to cover an entire meatball in one hand.
3. brown the meatballs in the large frying pan. be careful, this is when they are likely to break. brown all sides.
4. add tomotoes straight from can. hopefully you bought diced. also add tomato juice.
5. add pepper, carrots, celery...(be careful with vegetables. if you add them too early, they are too soft, too late and they are too hard.
6. this is also the time to add spices. just use what you have. this is the time to use your loosened up spicing hands (see wine from step 1). try basil, oregano, thyme, crushed red pepper (if you add this, add lots. no sense having a weak sauce), white pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, rosemary (probably not too much of this). . . .
7. add the meatballs to the sauce, which at this point should still be fairly liquidy. cover all meatballs with sauce - if the meat isn't completely covered, you have lots of stirring to do (or just add another can of tomatoes).
8. cook for an hour or so. there's no real science to it, so it might be an ninety minutes or even longer. try watching TV while everything is cooking (make sure you're using a non-stick pan if you elect this option).
9. stir every now and again, being extremely careful not to damage the meatballs.
10. serve on pasta.

variations? of course. the nature of this recipe is to turn whatever you have into a sauce. you want chicken meatballs? fine, throw chicken in the mixing bowl. it shouldn't make a difference. vegetarian variation? you could use an entire block of tofu. . . or just make the sauce, which is pretty good on its own.