Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Spaghetti and Chicken Meatballs with Sweet and Spicy sauce.

Chicken Meatballs and Spaghetti- A favorite of mine.

Cooking the meatballs in the sauce itself gives a great flavor to the sauce
The meatball mix

This is one of the easiest pasta dishes I have every made. To save time, you can make a great quantity of meatballs, a big amount of pasta sauce and freeze them both seperately. The whenever required, just cook the meatballs, thaw the sauce, boil the pasta and toss it together and serve it with a helping to parmesan cheese. Dinner is ready within 30 mins.
I always promise myself that the next time I would make big quantities of meatballs and sauce but it never happens.
Recipe:
For the sauce, just follow the red basic sauce recipe saved under pasta/noodles.
for the meatballs:
1 lb minced chicken breast
1 small onion minced
1/4 cup green scallions if you have any on hand
3 cloves of garlic minced
handful breadcrumbs
salt to taste
fresh black pepper
1 tsp dry basil
1/2 container ricotta cheese- this makes the meatballs delightfully moist
1 egg
2 tsps olive oil
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350F Mix all the ingredients except for the minced chicken in a large mixing bowl. Then add the minced chicken to it and mix. Donot over mix otherwise the meatballs would be tough. ball them into lime size balls. Arrange on a baking sheet. You can bake these directly or pour some spicy pasta sauce around it so that the juices flavor the sauce. Bake for 35 mins. Remove and let it stand for 5 mins and then mix it with the sweet sauce.
Now for the spicy pasta sauce:
I usually serve this pasta with 2 sauces, sweet and spicy. So when I make my basic red sauce, before adding sugar, I divide it into 2 parts. To part A I add more sugar and to part B, I add 1/2 tsp red chiilli flakes.
Boil the spaghetti per instructions and toss with little butter and 1 tsp dry basil. Heat up a sauce pan and add the sweet pasta sauce to it.
To serve: Take a plate, serve pasta on it. then serve some sweet pasta sauce, then meatballs and then some spicy pasta sauce around it. garnish with parmesan cheese and serve immediately:)
You could omit all the sweet-spicy pasta sauce instructions and stick to just one.
Remember to serve with red wine though!!
Enjoy
Dipti!!