Italian meatballs, tomato sauce and pasta

Serves 4. Halve for 2 servings

We feel there are two crowd (and kid) pleasers when it comes to food. First is obviously pizza, a natural born winner.

Then there is pasta. So often a family’s go to evening meal when short of time.

This pasta dish is so simple to make it can be taken from the chopping board to the bowl in less than 20 minutes. Yet is packed full of flavour and good wholesome ingredients which taste so much better than supermarket bought version.

Ingredients

4 Italian style sausages
1 medium white onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 bottle of GBOF Tomato sauce
1 White Onion
100g Parmesan or Grana Padano
1 tablespoon Extra virgin rapeseed oil, or olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
a small handful of fresh flat leaf parsley

Method

Peel and grate the onion. We find grating the onion helps it blend into the dish perfectly but you can finely dice it if preferred. Peel and grate the garlic, or crush and roughly chop if preferred. Finely grate the cheese. Set aside. Take the sausages and squeeze out of the skin. With 4 sausages there should be enough meat to make roughly 20 meatballs that are the size of a ping pong ball. Prepare your pasta of choice. We used Penne, but this dish works well with Spaghetti or tagliatelle.

Why do we use sausages and not sausage meat? The sausages contain the wheat that allows them to bind which ensures they won’t disintegrate when cooking. If you are gluten free you can use the Italian style sausage meat and add in a small amount of cornflour and mix before making into balls.

Cooking guide

Heat a saucepan on a medium heat, add the oil. Once heated add the onion to the pan and saute gently for 3 – 4 minutes until translucent and soft, stir occasionally to ensure that it doesn’t burn. Add meatballs, cooking them all over until browned. Add the garlic and cook for a further 1 – 2 minutes, stirring frequently to ensure the garlic doesn’t burn. Now add the sauce. Fill the empty bottle to about a third of the way up, shake around to mix all the leftover tomato sauce up and pour on top. Bring to a light boil and then reduce to a simmer while we cook the pasta.

Follow your pasta’s cooking guide which is usually around 10 – 12 minutes. Drain and pour into the pan with the meatballs in, add the cheese, leaving some to sprinkle over the top at the end, stir until all of the pasta is coated with the sauce and the cheese has melted in. Serve immediately in pasta bowls topping with some fresh flat leaf parsley and a sprinkling of the remaining cheese.

Pour into bowls,

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