Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Ina Nukes to Stardom

How does one transform herself from White House nuclear-energy policymaker into best-selling cookbook author and cooking-show host extraordinaire?

As the dichotomous life of Ina Garten illustrates, you never know what's in store for you.  If only Ina would take a break from T.R., Miguel, Frank, Stephen and Jeffrey, maybe she would have time to explain it all to me.  I'd bring her some hydrangeas and a fresh black smock top.  Hey, we could have a beach barbecue and I could even dig up some gay friends to bring along to the clambake. 

Until then, I'll simply marvel at her diverse and extraordinary talents as cook, recipe developer, author, teacher, TV host, caterer, store owner and nuclear-energy expert.  Underachiever!  And I'll share her terrific recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, of course. 

The melt-in-your-mouth meatballs - or golf ball-sized flavor bombs - are tender, yet they stay together; the wine-infused sauce is surprisingly quick and easy.  No long list of ingredients or all-day cooking are required.  Hubmeister raved about the sauce.  I used San Marzano tomatoes and inexpensive, read *cheap*, cabernet.  I made another batch of sauce a couple days later for the leftovers you see simmering in this photo:

A sub can't be far behind.
Notes:  Try to use fresh ingredients in this recipe.  It only takes a few seconds to make your own bread crumbs in the food processor, and while you have it out, use it to grind up the Parmesan cheese.

I don't see any point in retyping the whole recipe, so I'm including the link and you can go directly to it.  (I'm getting blog savvy!)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/real-meatballs-and-spaghetti-recipe/index.html

2 comments:

  1. I made these meatballs and sauce for dinner tonite and the meal was delicious. I tweaked both parts of the recipe, adding Italian seasonings and lots of garlic (fresh, garlic powder, roasted garlic). The recipe claims the meat mixture makes about 14 meatballs. Well, I made them the 2 inches suggested in the recipe and there were 24 meatballs when I finished! That's not a problem except there wasn't enough sauce so my advice would be to automatically double the sauce recipe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Doubling the sauce is a great idea. I had to make more for my leftovers. I usually get about 16 or 17 meatballs. It depends on the amount of meat and the size you shape them. Mine really are the size of golf balls. Ina and her men like 'em big!:)

    ReplyDelete