Spaghetti and Meatballs

This weekend the England Rugby squad take on Italy in their next match of the Six Nations Rugby tournament. We’ve created this Italian inspired recipe to enjoy while watching the game. To catch up on the previous recipes in this series check out our Côte de boeuf with herb butter which was created for their match against France and our Welsh Rarebit for their match against Wales last week, which if I might say was very exciting!

This healthy but also quite hearty meal is perfect for everyone in the family. It’s a great way of getting children who don’t like eating vegetables to eat them as there are so many ‘hidden’ in this recipe. My daughter wouldn’t touch it if she knew what was really in it; she thinks it’s just tomatoes! We’ve used De Cecco spaghetti for this recipe which we love and you can find at most supermarkets in the UK.

The 26cm Copper Base Sauté pan was just the right size pan for making the sauce, with it’s deep sides it kept everything in and when left to simmer reduced down perfectly.

Written by Fiona

Serves: 5

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

For the sauce:

• 1 tablespoon of coconut oil or substitute other oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 sticks of celery, chopped
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, diced
• 1-2 yellow or red peppers, chopped
• 300g of baby plum tomatoes, halved
• 700ml of chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, removed from the stock
• 1 teaspoon of turmeric
• Salt and pepper for seasoning

For the meatballs:

• 3 tablespoons of rapeseed oil
• 1kg of beef mince
• 300g brown bread crumbs (use a food processor to make these from brown bread)
• 2 eggs
• Half a beef stock cube
• 400g spaghetti
• Parmesan cheese, grated

Equipment

• Knife
• Chopping board
• 26cm Copper Base Sauté pan
• 24cm Copper Tri-ply Frying pan
• 20cm Copper Tri-ply Saucepan
• Mixing bowl
• Wooden spoon
• Food processor
• Hand blender or similar

Cooking Method

1. Heat the coconut oil in the sauté pan over a medium-low heat until it is decently hot (a few minutes). Add onions and cook until they are nearly translucent.
2. Add the carrots, celery, garlic and slowly soften for 10 minutes.
3. Add the peppers, baby plum tomatoes, stock, rosemary, thyme, turmeric and then season with salt and pepper.
4. Cook the sauce for 20 minutes.
5. While the sauce is cooking make the meatballs by mixing the beef with the breadcrumbs, eggs, and the crumbled half stock cube.
6. Make meatballs to your desired size. We made ours around the size of a golf ball.
7. Heat the rapeseed oil in the frying pan until decently hot and then brown the meatballs, add them to the sauce and simmer for 20 minutes.
8. Cook the spaghetti according to the instructions on the packet and serve with grated Parmesan cheese and a sprinkling of fresh thyme.