Thatsa Spicy Meatball….
Picture this…Sicily 1922..Somewhere, the echoes of a tenor singing “Ole Sole Mio” carries down the narrow, winding brick-laden streets of Southern Italy. Wafting through the air is the pungent smell of tomatoes and spices gently bubbling in an aged pot on the back of a wood stove nestled in the kitchen of a crumbling limestone house. Sitting alongside the simmering tomato sauce is a stock pot of sorts with many years of dents and a blackened smoked bottom awaiting the strands of home made pasta that will soon be plunged into the boiling water. And there she is…a grandmotherly lady in a faded bib apron, leisurely moving about in her small, but quaint Italian kitchen. The beam of sunshine that managed to peer through the single window in the room, focuses on the worn, wooden bowl sitting on the stained table in the center of the room. A closer look reveals a bowl containing a mixture of freshly ground meats and fragrant spices of fennel and dill. This mixture would soon be formed into giant meatballs by weathered, loving hands and placed on a well-worn baking pan and into a hot oven….. and…and …and the Meat ball is born!!!!
WRONG! 🥴 It is widely believed that spaghetti and meat balls was an innovation of the early 20th-century Italian immigrants in New York City in the 1920’s.
What?
Meat balls? New York City??? Say it isn’t so!
It is also said that Italian writers often mock the dish as pseudo-Italian or non-Italian. However there is a recipe for rigatoni and meat balls in an old Italian cookbook first published in 1894 by Pelegrino Artusi.
“…though Spaghetti with meat balls are rare in Italy there are Italian precursors: I have had spaghetti with tiny meat balls in Puglia, [Sicilian food authority] Pino Correnti notes that meatballs were a common addition to feast day pasta sauces in Sicily…”
Reading further, I find that even though we think of spaghetti with tomato sauce as the quintessential Italian dish, tomatoes didn’t become part of the Italian diet until the 1800’s. Wait, there is more….the first recipe for pasta with tomato sauce actually appeared in a French cookbook from 1797.
The conclusion is that the tomato-based pasta sauces we tend to think of as typically Italian – Bolognese, Pomodoro, Puttanesca – are actually more recent developments….well, not that recent but you get the picture. 🥰
So let us talk meat balls and sauce…particularly spicy sauce. I don’t know when the Arrabbiata Sauce came into Italian cooking…..forgive me if I don’t burst that balloon, but I can tell you this:
Arrabbiata Sauce, or sugo all’arrabbiata in Italian, is a spicy sauce for pasta made from garlic, tomatoes, and red chili peppers cooked in olive oil. “Arrabbiata” literally means “angry” in Italian; the name of the sauce refers to the spiciness of the chili peppers.
Ok… now we are talking! My Southwest cooking background makes me love, love, love this tomato sauce! And when I am “picturing Sicily” (forgive this and the above reference to the Sophia Petrillo character on “Golden Girls”)…..
…I can only imagine two Italian ladies arguing the merits of which type of tomato sauce is the best as they gesture with their hands, wooden spoons clutched in their fingers.
Sorry, forgive my drama, but I just can’t help it!
My large (and growing) cookbook library just found a new friend. Yes, I found yet another cookbook…I think I need a cookbook intervention. “Hello, my name is Kari…and I am a cookbook addict!”
But before I start visiting Cookbooks Anonymous, let me tell you about The Farmhouse Cookbook. I love this book as it is filled with many comfort food recipes…and since the author, Sarah Mayor grew up and still lives on a British Farm that has been in her family for generations, the recipes are amazing! A few of the intriguing recipes include Sponge Cakes, Herby Scotch Eggs, Honey-Roasted Goose… (Tiny Tim says ‘God Bless Us Every One’) and wait for it…..Meat balls!!!!! Yep! that good ole Italian Meat balls and Pasta!
The recipe in the book called for smoky Bacon in the ground beef and ground pork meat mixture and yes, that sounds perfect! However, I couldn’t resist using Pancetta….come on now….remember? Italian?
Or you could substitute Prosciutto….you might ask what is the difference between Bacon, Pancetta and Prosciutto? These three pork products look alike, taste somewhat similar, and even get regularly substituted for each other. Simplified, one has to cook Bacon and Pancetta, while Prosciutto can be eaten uncooked or in the “raw” stage much as we would eat smoked ham.
Now that we have all this history ingested….lets get down to the meat balls. Mix the ingredients, form into a ball about the size that would fit in the cup of your hand (you can make smaller if you like)…place on a greased cookie sheet or use parchment paper and place in a hot 450 degree oven to begin browning. You could use a stove top method, but the oven is easier, in my opinion.
Make the Arrabbiata sauce or buy in the jar at the super market …no judging here…add the meat balls to the sauce and cook until cooked through and serve over your favorite pasta while listening to Pavarotti sing all the Italian classics. In my mind, meat balls and spaghetti are Italian. Who can believe these history books anyway??
The handy dandy printable recipe is below:
Happy Monday! and keep smiling!
- 12 ounces Pancetta (or you can use bacon)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 large onion, finely diced
- 4 cloves garlic, finely minced
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1¼ cups plain breadcrumbs
- ¾ cups grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano
- 1 tablespoon dried basil
- 2 teaspoons fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon red chili flakes
- ½ cup of fresh parsley, chopped (or you can use 1 tablespoon dried parsley)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 2 eggs whisked with ¾ cups warm water
- pasta of your choice (about 2 pounds)
- freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- For the Arrabbiata Sauce: (or you could substitute Arrabbiata Sauce in a jar)
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 small onion, minced
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 cup pitted black olives, coarsely chopped
- 2 tablespoons drained capers, rinsed
- 1/2 teaspoon salt, (do the taste test)
- 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1/2 cup white wine (or chicken broth)
- 1 28-ounce can crushed Italian tomatoes (if using plain, crushed tomatoes... add 2 Tablespoons Italian Seasoning)
- I also like to add a pinch of sugar (optional)
- salt and pepper to taste
- Preheat over to 450 degrees. Lightly spray a baking sheet with cooking oil spray and set aside
- Finely chop the Pancetta or you can place in a food processor and pulse until very finely chopped.
- Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a dutch oven until hot and carefully add the pancetta, onion and garlic stirring to combine and brown slightly (about 5 minutes)
- Use a slotted spoon to remove the pancetta mixture to paper towels to drain.
- Add the ground beef, ground pork, bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, fennel seeds, red chili flakes, oregano, basil, parsley, whisked eggs/water mixture and the salt and black pepper to a large bowl and using your clean hands, gently combine the ingredients (do not over mix as the meat balls will be tough)
- Shape the meat balls to desired size...I like to make large meatballs, about 2 inches in diameter and place on the prepared cookie sheet
- Bake for about 10 minutes
- Remove the meat balls from the cookie sheet and place into the previously used dutch oven or deep pan
- Add the sauce (recipe below) or you can use the jars of Arrabbiata Sauce
- Simmer the meat balls and sauce for about 15-30 minutes or until the meat balls are cooked through.
- Serve over spaghetti or your favorite pasta and sprinkle with Parmesan Cheese
- Add olive oil to a hot pan over medium-high heat and add in the onions. As the onions begin to soften, add the garlic, black olives, capers and red pepper flakes, stirring to mix. Whisk in the wine (or chicken broth)
- Cook until the liquid reduces by half and add the crushed tomatoes stirring to combine. Add a pinch of sugar and taste test for additional salt and pepper to taste.
- Reduce the heat to low, add in the meat balls and simmer for 30 minutes.
- To Serve, add freshly grated Parmasan cheese
- You can use a food processor to finely dice and chop pancetta, onions and garlic. Or you can hand chop depending on your preference for finely minced veggies or chunks in your meat balls.
- Recommend using 2 jars good-quality Arrabbiata sauce if you are not making your own.
- The Arrabiata Sauce can be made ahead and divided into freezer bags and placed in the freezer for future use.
My mother used to make a similar recipe, which I loved. Your post took me back I enjoyed the vintage vibe of the photos.
Amalia
xo
Great post on the history of spaghetti – who knew?? And are those photos yours from prior travels? Let me tell you something about cookbooks – they sell like hotcakes in our antique booth, especially the regional ones featuring Junior Leagues, churches, and other group roundups of recipes. When going to estate sales, they are whisked off the shelves. So you probably have a small gold mine in your collection!
I am loving your commentary and now I want Meatballs! Your recipe looks delicious. I want to make them very soon because you have my mouth watering.
Happy June my friend.
Thanks Nancy…these meatballs are so good and spicy..,which is what I like…although these days (since surgery etc;) I can’t eat too much spicy. Have a great day.
I don’t know what makes my mouth water most — reading the recipe or reading your fabulous commentary. You are a brilliant writer, my friend. Your words bring to live a visual that is too wonderful to even imagine, and the flavors are so eloquently described that I think I can taste them. I am simply over the moon reading this post (in fact, I read it more than once!) Rick makes a good arrabiata (sp) sauce. But we’ve never done it with meatballs and these sound wonderful.
Thank you Jeanie for your sweet comments….I love to write and have written a few novels that have never gotten completely finished…The Captain has given up telling me to finish them because he knows me too well. I am not sure why I haven’t finished them…perhaps because I never want them to end or I haven’t found a perfect ending. Then I got sick and for almost 2 years I did not do anything because it was such an effort. However, I do LOVE to read and always have a book on my nightstand. AND I love to cook and eat and I hope Rick makes his sauce with meat balls sometime. It is soooooo good. Hugs and blessings to you both.
Mmmm now I’m craving big meatballs and spicy sauce, Kari! I am also a cookbook addict and have been collecting for years. I just can’t part with them. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one out there! Oh we’d have fun if we lived close to each other! Have a beautiful week!
We sure could have fun Kitty…I tell myself I don’t need another cookbook and then I see one with a certain recipe and I know the other recipes have to be good. LOL…I did see a recipe the other day using a stuffing mix for the filler in meat loaf and I thought I might try that to see how the meat loaf turned out. I already put bread soaked in milk and sage & poultry seasoning in my meat loaf, so it wouldn’t be much different. ‘And the beat goes on’ as they say. 🥰 Thanks for stopping by my friend.
Kari, your introductory paragraph is fabulous and it places me in our memories of trips to Italy! Butch and I love Italian food. I have never even met an Italian dish that I don’t love. We have actually enjoyed a meal or two in Little Italy in NYC! Thank you for the fun read and the recipe! Happy June, my friend!
We love Italian food too Pam…and the Captain and I have gotten some delicious pizza as well as other Italian dishes in NYC. I like making those large meatballs as it is almost like eating a meat loaf if you know what I mean. So many different ways to make them and unfortunately, I love every recipe. Can you believe we are into June already? Hugs and blessings!
Hi honey… well I recognized the quote… I always wanted to be Blanche, but knew I was a Dorothy… and as for meatballs… well we couldn’t afford to buy more than 2oz of minced meat so that wasn’t going to make a meatball…
My father (Italian and a chef) always preferred his spaghetti over anything else.. “That was lovely, but I would have been happy with pasta”… Mother became a dab hand at preserving the tomatoes and killing the rabbits… but never was there a meatball.. We rarely bought meat… if you didn’t grow it/kill it.. you couldn’t eat it…
However, the Chinese did have a history for meatballs in broth.. so perhaps they invented them… Otherwise, my bible on things like this is Bill Bryson’s “Made in America” and the USA takes the prize.
Did you know “Ikea Group expects to sell 236 million Swedish meatballs in the U.S. in the fiscal year that ends August 2016.” Perhaps the Swedish nation invented them eh!
I did pick up a freezer pack the last time I was there and they are just perfect for that instant spaghetti and meatballs..
“Picture it, Sicily 1922. It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times — it was Sicily 1922: A beautiful young woman with breasts not unlike Brigette Neilson, except hers moved when she skipped, she comes walking down a picturesque country road when suddenly a yellow Rolls Royce pulls up and blocks her path! The Rolls Royce moves on and the girls finds her pepperoni is missing; she has no pepperoni to bring to her family’s table, she gets histerical. She starts to run. She runs through the field, the meadow, over the hill until she comes to a raging river filled with pepperoni swimming up stream!
Dorothy: Ma (interrupting Sophia), peperoni swimming up stream??
Sophia: Yeah, I know it’s odd. Pepperoni is a land meat — but there it was.
She leans into the river, grabs an arm full and races home to feed her family. When she tells them the story they think its an act of God. Then as it turned out a disgruntled pepperoni stuffer had blown up the factory in a neighboring town and caused pepperoni to rain down over a hundred square miles, which is where the old saying “it’s raining cats and pepperoni” comes from. Is this helping anyone yet because this sure feels like an ending to me…””
enjoy a laugh… it is good for the soul (like Chicken Soup)
Hugs xxx
love it love it love it! My dear friend I am laughing out loud…..Sophia had some stories didn’t she? I think we all have/had a bit of Blanche in us from time to time …..lets hope we aren’t too much like Rose though, too much naivete’. Yep! we both are definitely a Dorothy!
When I was growing up…our staple was goulash….not like the gourmet goulash of today’s standards but a macaroni and tomato and onion combo that had very little ground beef….Mother could stretch 1 pound of ground beef over 3 or four meals for 5 people, by teasing our palates with a smidgen of meat amongst lots of pasta.
Hugs Always
So true honey… a little bit of Rose could be useful sometimes when you need that extra shelving put up eh! I actually read one of Betty White’s autobiographies and I found it very moving.
It seems that we are eating more meat now generally, although I’m down to twice a week (and one of those is my bacon sandwich!). I can’t imagine any of the TV chefs being able to work without the store cupboards of today… and the extensive freezer…
I don’t remember going hungry (which explains why I was a pudgy child… I blamed my mother recently… it wasn’t quite Sicily, but the mama said “if you don’t eat that now you will get it for breakfast..” She now says she wouldn’t have made me eat it for breakfast, but too late the fear created the habit of always cleaning my plate.
Chuckling hugs from across the pond.. xx
LOL…my mother used to tell me that children in China were starving….so out of fear that they would starve to death…I always cleaned up my plate! As I got older, I questioned Mom on how my cleaning up my plate helped those starving children in China? I added that it would have made more sense if I were to pack up my left overs and mail them off to China! My mother indignantly told me… that was the silliest thing she ever heard! 🙂
Hugs Always!