Spaghetti Meatballs!

A quick one today, while my children are watching TV. Due to the school mid term holidays, the eldest has been hogging the PC since this morning and was on it the whole of yesterday so I could not indulge in any bit of writing/ typing at all these few days, to my disappointment.

This is for a friend who asked for a meatball recipe. My family has gotten a little tired of spaghetti bolognaise and so I looked for an 'alternative' and found this recipe a few months ago and of course tweaked it a bit for my own taste buds and the result is, I think, good. My husband and I love it although my children will have none of it – they never want the meat in any spaghetti sauce anyway, be it mutton, beef, chicken or seafood in whatever forms; plain, mini balls, boxes and pyramids being the forms and shapes that I have painstakingly tried making. But the tomatoes in the sauce – they just love, and so to me it is still worth the effort to make any type of pasta with tomatoes in the sauce. But anyway, as I mentioned, my husband and I love it and so I’m sharing this with anyone who cares to try. It’s very simple. Here are the ingredients;

For meatballs:
250g minced meat
1 egg
1 slice of bread, shredded into small pieces (just by using your fingers)
salt to taste
garlic salt
1 tspn dried parsley
a sprinkle of black pepper
¼ tsp cumin seed, pounded (jintan putih)

A large jar of your favourite spaghetti sauce. (I use a 750g jar)
½ bombay onion
Salt to taste

Mix all meatball ingredients well and leave for a while in the fridge so that it will be easier for you to shape them into small size balls. Heat up your pot and add some olive oil to fry your onions for a bit before adding the sauce. Once it reaches boiling point, reduce the heat and let it simmer while you prepare the meatballs. In order to shape the meat into balls, take a handful of the meat mixture in your hand and squeeze so that the meat comes out in between your thumb and forefinger. Use a teaspoon to scoop and shape the meat mixture into small sized meatballs and drop them into a bowl (I normally make them just a little bigger than the fish balls back home). Once they are all ready, drop them slowly into the pot and increase heat for a while, slowly stirring initially so that the balls will not break or crumble. Again, reduce the heat once the sauce has reached boiling point and simmer for a while (25 to 30 minutes, I think), stirring once in a while. Add salt to taste.

Tip: Don’t forget to add some olive oil in your boiling water when cooking your spaghetti. Once cooked in the time as instructed on packet, drain and run cold water through it for a few seconds before melting a few dollops of butter on the still hot and steaming spaghetti. I just think it taste better this way. Try it!

(I apologise for the pic (for all my own pics for that matter), because I could not be bothered to take out my digicam each time I take any pics and so I just use the nearest camera around which is the camera on my hp! (Nokia n70). I find the pics are quite good when taken outdoors but inside the house, I need to switch on all my lights for a barely acceptable pic. Hope they don't hurt your artistic sensibilities too much.)