Certainly you have eaten the meatballs sauce. They are a classic Italian dish. Who has never prepared them at least once? In my family my grandmother cooked them and today my mother continues to cook them. It’s a tasty dish and it’s very easy to prepare as well. I like simple dishes, but I love to make precious these ones with something special. So I’ve decided to combine this classic second course with beautiful fresh pappardelle. Obviously I’ve made fresh pasta at home. I have nothing against the simple dishes, indeed I agree with a quote by Paul Mehis who compared the love to cooking: “Love is like good food, the special things always born from simple ingredients, but they are made magical with the imagination”. So… Choose genuine ingredients and play with the imagination: you will get brilliant dishes in their simplicity!
Serves: 4
For the fresh pasta:
- 300 grams 00 flour
- 3 medium eggs
For the meatballs:
- 200 grams ground beef
- 200 grams minced pork
- 20 grams breadcrumbs
- 1 egg
- 30 gramsf grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- 30 grams grated Caciocavallo cheese
- 1 peeled garlic clove
- Salt
- Fresh ground white pepper
- Nutmeg
- Basil leaves
For the sauce:
- 200 grams tomato paste
- needed water
- 1 peeled garlic clove
- Nutmeg
- A pinch of salt
- A pinch of caster sugar
- Dried chili pepper to taste
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
Start preparing the pasta. Place the flour on a wooden board, add the eggs and begin to knead. The dough should be smooth, so it will have to be worked for about 10 minutes. Form a ball, cover with cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
In the meantime create the meatballs. Mix all the ingredients including the chopped basil leaves in a large bowl. Every meatball must have weigh 25 grams. Put aside. Prepare the sauce. Sautè the garlic and the chilli pepper in a little oil. Pour the tomato paste, stir and pour some water: it will take some water as much as necessary to create a sauce that it isn’t too thick. Season with salt and sugar. Flavor with nutmeg and cook for about 5 minutes on low heat. Then bring to a boil and add the meatballs. Cover and cook for 30 minutes. After cooking, lay the meatballs on a dish and leave the sauce in the pot.
Form the pappardelle. Divide the dough into small loaves. Take one, while the others leave them wrapped in the cling film so they will not dry up. Roll the pasta dough through a pasta machine, starting from the widest setting, and gradually going down the settings until the arrow is between 0 and 1. The pasta dough should be very thin ( about 1 mm thickness). Proceed in the same way for all the other loaves. Cut the pappardelle with a width of at least 1 cm. Cook the pappardelle in plenty of boiling salted water. Drain the pasta and pour it directly into the pan where you’ve cooked the sauce. Let them flavor for a few seconds. Serve with meatballs. If you want, decorate with basil leaves.