Meatball pasta bake-recipe
Meatball pasta bake-recipe
A meatball is ground meat rolled into a small ball, sometimes along with other ingredients, such as bread crumbs, minced onion, eggs, butter, and seasoning. Meatballs are cooked by frying, baking, steaming, or braising in sauce. There are many types of meatballs using different types of meats and spices. The term is sometimes extended to meatless versions based on vegetables or fish; the latter are also commonly known as fishballs.
The ancient Roman cookbook Apicius included many meatball-type recipes.
Early recipes included in some of the earliest known Persian cookbooks generally feature seasoned lamb rolled into orange-sized balls and glazed with egg yolk and sometimes saffron. This method was taken to the West and is referred to as gilding. Many regional variations exist, notable among them the unusually large kufte Tabrīzī, from Iran’s North-Western region, having an average diameter of 20 centimetres
Poume d’oranges is a gilded meatball dish from the Middle Ages.
Various recipes of meatballs can be found across Europe and Asia. From Iberia and Sweden to the Indian subcontinent, there is a large variety of meatballs in the kofta family.
Try our new recipe with Meatballs and Pasta – you have to work a little, but the result is worth the effort!
Meatball pasta bake-recipe
Ingredients
- 450 g free-range pork sausages, skinned
- handful basil, chopped
- small bunch flat-teaf parsley, chopped
- 2 tbsp Olive Oil
- 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 red peppers, deseeded and sliced
- 1 courgette, sliced, or 150g <5oz) baby courgettes
- handful pitted black olives, roughly sliced
- 560 g bottle passata
- 200 ml (7fl oz) white wine
- 1 tbsp mixed herbs
- 300 g 10oz) pasta twists, cooked and drained
- 150 g (5oz) mini mozzarella
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 190 C, 170 C fan, 375 F, gas 5. Put the sausage meat in a bowl with the basil and half the parsley* Mix, then roll into golf ball-size meatballs.
- Heat the olive oil in a non-stick frying pan and fry the meatballs for about 10 minutes, until golden. Remove from the pan and add the garlic, onion, peppers and courgette,
- Cook for 5 minutes, then add the olives, passata, wine and mixed herbs. Bubble for 10 minutes, until reduced by a third,
- Toss the pasta twists with the meatballs, remaining parsley and the tomato sauce
- Transfer to an ovenproof dish and scatter over the mozzarella. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until bubbling.
Video
Notes
See also recipe with meatballs
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another recipe with meatballs!