Best Baked Meatballs

Growing up, we often had spaghetti, but never spaghetti and meatballs. Meat sauce was the go to option. Of course a meat sauce is classically delicious and simple, but as a very food focused kid, I always yearned for meatballs. Our play kitchen’s plastic spaghetti came with three plastic meatballs. The families on Friday night sitcoms had spaghetti and meatballs. I was slightly annoyed by my childhood lack of meatballs, but not enough so to risk demanding them of my hardworking mother. I accepted our meat sauces and moved on.

As a college student in Washington, D.C., I had the chance to have tons of awesome professional experiences, and with them, work events. Drinks were always served, and of course, in the spirit of young professionalism, I would politely decline- but of course, always indulged in the food. The first real spaghetti and meatballs I ever had were served at one of these events. When I spotted the servers coming around with plates piled high with pasta and meatballs, I fought my best to hide my excitement, continuing to idly chat with coworkers and clients, while underneath the table, my feet were tapping in anticipation. 

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Simple 30 Minute Pasta

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We’ve added another baby boy to our family. His name is George, and he’s a five-month-old, sixty-pound Bordeaux mastiff. He’s big, he’s playful, and he’s sweet. Also, he’s nearly impossible to control, so we’ve signed up for puppy training classes. The class is once a week at seven in the evening, which is a pretty annoying commitment given the time of day. It’s around the time we typically eat dinner, which is an issue in itself. If boyfriend doesn’t eat around the same time every day, he turns into a diva. Demanding, aggressive, on edge. His hunger really gets the best of him.

So one evening, about an hour before puppy class, I notice the diva emerging. He’s walking around the kitchen restlessly, snapping at the dogs, opening and closing cabinets. My first mind tells me “don’t cook anything, he’ll be fine until after class”. But I see him angrily chewing on a handful of dry cereal, and come to my senses. I roll my eyes, put on a pot of boiling water, chop some veggies, and in about thirty minutes we have a big, steaming bowl of pasta. Twenty minutes later, we’re in the car on the way to puppy class. The diva has disappeared, and my loving boyfriend is back. Further annoyance diverted.

A quick pasta dish is always my go to for situations like this. Most pasta takes about eight minutes to reach al dente, and throwing together a quick pasta sauce takes only a few more. You can add whatever you have on hand to the pasta, making it unique and great for using up random veggies that might be floating around your fridge. In this case I had shrimp, a can of diced tomatoes, asparagus, and parmesan. Boom.

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What You’ll Need:

A package of fettuccine
About a pound of medium  to large shrimp, peeled and deveined
A bunch of asparagus, trimmed
One large onion
Can of diced tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste

For the sauce:

Couple of cloves of minced garlic
Couple tablespoons of flour
A cup of milk (have a little more on hand in case the sauce gets a bit thick toward the end)
½ cup of shredded or shaved parmesan
Dried oregano
Dried basil
Salt & pepper
Couple tablespoons of olive oil or butter
 

What To Do:

Put a large stockpot of water on over high heat, and sprinkle liberally with salt. Cooking your pasta in salty water is the key to well-seasoned pasta, and the basis of a well-balanced dish. Allow pot to come to a rolling boil.

While you’re waiting for the pot to come to a boil, prepare your vegetables. Clean, trim, and chop your asparagus into about inch long pieces. Take special care to remove the tough stalks of the asparagus, or roughly the bottom two inches of the vegetable.  Throw the chopped asparagus into a deep skillet with about a tablespoon of olive oil. You can salt and pepper them in the pan as they cook over medium heat. Seasoning in the pan always makes me feel like a real chef, so I imagine it will do the same for you.

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After your asparagus get going, go ahead and dice your onion. Remove the asparagus from the pan once they’re easily pierced with a fork, or cooked to your liking. I typically let them go for about eight minutes, so they’re tender, and a beautiful bright green. Set them aside.

Toss your diced onion into the same pan once the asparagus have been removed. Let them cook down until softened. Your pasta water should’ve come to a boil by now, so go ahead and dump your pasta in, and add another tablespoon of olive oil to the water, to keep the pasta from sticking. From here I employ my standard alfredo sauce recipe, but leave the onions in the pan for good measure. They flavor the sauce nicely.

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Add your drained tomatoes to the skillet, right into the simmering sauce, followed by your shrimp (which you can lightly season with salt and pepper before adding). Let the shrimp go for about three minutes, then add the asparagus. Give it another three or so minutes then add your pasta, right into the skillet (another surefire way to feel like a real chef). Toss the pasta around with the sauce, getting everything well combined. Let the entire skillet go for about another five minutes. Voila! Serve in big bowls with a sprinkling of flat leaf parsley and a little shaved parmesan.

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Extra Tips:

• Buy your shrimp peeled and deveined. There’s nothing worse than being in a rush and realizing you have to prepare your shrimp. Your grocer will do if for you if you ask.
   
• Despite how lengthy the recipe might look, this dish goes really quickly. Be careful to pay close attention to how long your shrimp cooks in the dish. They cook very quickly, and can go from perfectly cooked to tough little shrimp nuggets if you aren’t careful.
   
• Use a really deep skillet, so you can fit everything in together at the end. If you don’t have a very deep skillet, you can drain the pasta, return it to its pot, pour the sauce over it, and mix it there. Same deal. 

Pasta Sauce 101

I first started cooking in undergrad, with a self-mandated, weekly grocery budget of forty dollars. Yup. Forty whole dollars. And like any other college student, my staple meal was what else? Spaghetti. Spaghetti made with jars upon jars of processed pasta sauce. Looking back on my years of spaghetti consumption, I realize that it didn’t have to be that way.

Homemade sauce is not only easy and customizable, but also much better for us than the canned stuff. A handful of simple ingredients always trumps stumbling over scary, unrecognizable ones on the back of a Preggo can. Although I can't deny that until pretty recently, I have enjoyed  those cans of Preggo. No shade. But we grow!

I work with three basic sauces. A marinara, an alfredo, and lovely mix of the two- a creamy marinara. They’re also all very versatile- ever tried a white lasagna? It’s fabulous. Of course they take a little more time than cracking open a premade jar, but isn’t the extra fifteen minutes worth it? These no fail sauces are the basis of tons of my regular recipes.

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Basic Marinara Sauce

8 oz can of tomato sauce
8 oz can of crushed tomatoes (if you’re into a chunkier sauce)
A medium diced onion
Couple of cloves of minced garlic
A dash of red pepper flakes
Dried oregano
Dried basil
About a tablespoon of sugar
Salt & pepper
Couple tablespoons of olive oil

Over medium heat, sauté red pepper flakes, oregano, and basil in olive oil for about a minute to release their flavor. Add onion and garlic, sauté until they soften and your kitchen smells like heaven. Side note: be careful here not to let your garlic burn! Burnt garlic is terribly bitter, and that bitterness can ruin your sauce.

Once the garlic and onion have softened, go ahead and add your can of tomato sauce and give everything a stir. (Add diced tomatoes if you so choose here). Allow the sauce to come to a soft boil (you’ll know when it starts to bubble). Once it does, turn it down to low and allow it to simmer.

At this point, you can give the sauce a taste and determine how you want to proceed. Salt, pepper, and sugar are all a preferential thing. But I always add the tablespoon of sugar to balance the acidity of all the tomato. It doesn’t make the sauce sweet, just rounds everything out.  

Alfredo Sauce

Couple of cloves of minced garlic
Couple tablespoons of flour
A cup of milk (have a little more on hand in case the sauce gets a bit thick toward the end)
½ cup of shredded or shaved parmesan
Dried oregano
Dried basil
Salt & pepper
Couple tablespoons of olive oil or butter
Teaspoon of lemon juice (optional)

Like the marinara recipe, sauté the oregano, and basil in the olive oil or butter for about a minute over medium heat. Add and garlic sauté until it softens, and once again, your kitchen smells like heaven.

Now we’re going to make a rue. Don’t be scared! It’s simple stuff. Lightly sprinkle the flour into the garlicky olive oil, a tablespoon at a time. Whisk the flour into the oil- it will thicken into a paste. Look, you made a rue!

Slowly whisk the milk into the rue, breaking up the paste. Make sure to distribute the rue throughout the milk, and not to leave any weird flour lumps. Turn down the heat to low.

Go ahead and sprinkle the parmesan into the beautifully smooth sauce you’ve created. Sprinkle it bit by bit, giving it a stir. If using lemon juice, you can add that now. I find that it brightens what’s undoubtedly a super rich sauce. Season with salt and pepper. If the sauce gets a bit too thick for your liking, add an additional splash of milk until it reaches your desired consistency. Just make sure to salt and pepper accordingly.

Tomato Cream Sauce

8 oz can of tomato sauce
A medium diced onion
Couple of cloves of minced garlic
A dash of red pepper flakes
Dried oregano
Dried basil
About a tablespoon of sugar
½ cup of heavy cream
Salt & pepper
Couple tablespoons of olive oil

Prepare classic marinara sauce as described above. At the end, add the heavy cream and give it a good stir. Boom, tomato cream sauce.

Remember, these sauces are subjective. If you want a chunky sauce, add the crushed tomatoes. Spicier sauce? Amp it up with more red pepper flakes. Make them your own! You might never stop at the sauce section in your local grocery store again.