Meatballs

I love meatballs.  They are a hearty meal, a canape, they can be flattened into burger patties, eaten with pasta or crusty fresh bread... what's not to like? 

As with any of my recipes, there are a number of ingredient substitutions you could make according to your taste.  I have made these with both beef mince and pork/veal mince (my local Woolworths sells pork and veal mince already combined which is convenient) and both options work well.  I suppose you could even make it a three-way beef/pork/veal split.  Leave most of the fat on the bacon to ensure a succulent meatball, but if you are feeling particularly diet conscious, as I sometimes do, you can use shortcut bacon- just add another rasher in to compensate for the smaller size of each slice. You'll notice that I specify 'pre-fried' onion to add to the other ingredients- this is purely personal taste as I dislike onions with any crunch left in (and they usually retain a bit of rawness, even after the meatballs are cooked).  If you don't mind a bit of tanginess to your onion pieces, by all means, don't pre-fry them, and if you are completely lazy, just use onion powder instead, half a teaspoon should do it. When I want to use this recipe to make burger patties (or, God forbid, rissoles), I sometimes also add a squeeze of tomato paste to the mixture.

When it comes to serving the meatballs, you can serve them as a meat component (rather than a sauce topping for pasta) with, say, mashed potato and veggies, and reserve the now-flavoured sauce for the next night's pasta.  I find that used in this way, the quantities in this recipe will serve 2 as a meat course with a few leftover meatballs to return to the sauce for tomorrow.  As a pasta sauce, this recipe will serve 4.

Ingredients
500 grams beef or pork/veal mince
5 rashers bacon, minced or chopped very finely
big handful of parsley, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 onion, chopped finely and pre-fried
1 small egg, beaten briefly
1 tbsp parmesan cheese
salt, pepper
olive oil
500g Napolitana sauce, sugo or passata.

Method
Combine all ingredients apart from the tomato sauce and olive oil together into a mixing bowl.  Sometimes, when I can be bothered, I heat up the frypan at this stage and cook a small piece of the mixture to check for salt and flavour, and adjust the ingredients accordingly.

Roll the mixture into balls of a uniform size (but whether small or large is up to you).  In a large, relatively high-sided frypan, heat 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and fry the meatballs until browned on the outside. 

Add tomato sauce to pan, and simmer on a low heat until the meatballs are cooked all the way through.