Sweet and Spicy Spaghetti and Meatballs
Life is filled with contradictions. How can a warthog be both a pig but also a small, hard, benign growth on the skin, caused by a virus? How can the squirrel be the most adorable animal but run away when I try to hug it? How can Quantum Mechanics be a field of study when nothing is real and everything you know is a lie? Quantum Mechanics is the philosophy of physics in that anything can be happening based off of you thinking it might be happening or not. You're welcome there is no spoon if you want it to be.
Why won't you love me?
So, on to the recipe. "Zack," you may ask, "Zack, how can spaghetti and meatballs be both sweet and spicy at the same time that seems like a contradiction." You're correct my student it is a contradiction but like the mighty squirrel food, can also be many things and as you will soon see it is everything. On to the recipe.
Sweet Meatball Ingredients:
2/3 pound ground beef
2/3 pound ground pork
2/3 pound ground veal or 1 pound of pork and beef if veal is inhumane or 2 pounds of beef or piggies are too cute and smart to eat or nothing and go home and do something else while you slowly stroke yourself with your moral superiority. I'm a good person. I don't need your judgement for what I do and don't eat. I know you were thinking "oh veal he must love the torture and unceremonious execution of small baby animals." You would be correct when you say that but I don't actually eat veal myself I just advocate for others to. JESUS CHRIST COULD YOU GET OFF OF MY BACK! I'M DOING THE BEST I CAN! I'm going to go for a walk to cool down. Figure out the recipe yourself. (Door slams you hear muffled screaming in the distance. That screaming then turns to dry heaving and sobbing.)
OK, I'm back. Let's not talk about this anymore, just know that I'm sorry and that I'm trying to work it out. 1 (shivers) gala apple grated. I'm OK. It's official I'm not going back to red delicious. I found out from my grandmother smith that she saw him kissing pie crust at the dollar store, the cheap bitch. This was after he told me he wasn't seeing her anymore. You know you waste the best years of your life then he just goes and trades you in for the cheaper younger new model. It's not even like she's that pretty. She's just young and probably sucks his peen more often. Well screw them both. I don't care anymore. I hope they enjoy their lives of repeatedly passing chlamydia back and forth to eachother.
2 tablespoons sage, thyme, oregano, basil, maybe rosemary I don't want to enter each of these individually so I will just say put equal amounts of all of these.
1/2 cup of carrots grated
1 onion grated
Salt and pepper (not the hair color of sexy, distinguished older men)
Not this
1 tablespoon Worsechester, werchester, wursechter, wonfhdkosjskdh, the sauce that you put on steak sometimes that makes stuff taste like beef.
Whatever this is called. I think it's British.
1/2 cup of non instant oats or instant oats with that weird brown sugar packets inside whatever you have. That was a joke don't do that. I have not tried it and do not attest to its validity.
1 extra large egg (most recipes use large eggs but like the mighty squirrel I'm mixing it up. You're gonna need that extra egg)
Spicy Tomato Sauce Ingredients (boy this is a long recipe. We might need to take a break on this one):
1 can of those tomatoes with green chilies in them or if you live in a place where they don't put green chilies in your tomatoes 1 can of green chilies. I can be very accommodating. I understand that my white privilege gives me the opportunity to have green chilies already in my tomatoes. The issue is that is not true for a lot of people. That's why we need to supply people with green chilies so they too can rise up, wise up, eyes up.
1 can of tomatoes sans chilies (that's fancy talk for no chilies)
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
3 cloves of minced garlic
1/2 of red wine
2 tablespoons of basil, oregano, thyme again me being lazy
pinch of cayenne I wasn't lazy enough to tell you to put 2 tablespoons of cayenne because that may truly kill you and I don't want that on my conscience.
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes again your welcome for not saying 2 tablespoons
1 onion not grated
1 roasted red pepper (quick recipe: place pepper covered with oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder in oven at 425 cook for 45 minutes turning periodically. Take out cover with towel and peal skin after pepper has cooled. The pepper's not yours. See I can be pithy in a recipe.)
Instructions (this is going to be quick because frankly I've gotten tired of writing this):
Mix all ingredients for Sweet Meatballs together in a medium mixing bowl.
Form your meat mixture (doesn't that sound appetizing) (focus Zack, you said you were going to finish this quickly) into small balls or meatballs if you will.
Heat large stock pot over medium high heat burner or shitty electric stove.
Cover the bottom with olive oil
Cook meatballs until the outsides have been sufficiently browned. They don't have to be fully cooked through because you are going to throw them back in for longer later. Don't add too many at a time because you will crowd the pot and make it difficult for them to cook is something I always tell myself to do then it anyway, but please be better than me.
Remove meatballs and set aside for later. Try not to eat too many of them while you're cooking.
You should have some fat left in the pan from the ground beef, pork, veal or ground beef, pork mixture, or ground beef mixture or ground self satisfaction mixture which is surprisingly fatty.
Turn heat down to medium and add an extra 2 tablespoons of butter.
Add onions, herbs, cayenne, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes and sautee for 6 minutes.
Add garlic and sautee for an additional 2 minutes.
Mix in tomato paste and cook for a minute.
Turn heat up to high and drop the red wine into the pot, enjoy the satisfying sizzle the pot makes as the alcohol is liberated from the liquid. Breath it in and get a contact high because this has been a long recipe and we're almost done.
Chop roasted red pepper and add that with the two types of tomatoes and bring to a boil.
Back heat down to low and simmer for 2 hours. Don't worry I'll wait here for you to be done.
You may need to blend the tomatoes using a hand blender or something like that or they may disintegrate by themselves.
Add meatballs back to pot (see I told you we would put these back in later and you were worried that I had forgotten)
Simmer for another 10 minutes.
Add whatever type of pasta you like. Spaghetti is the classic but we are already switching it up with the spicy sweet element so this is untrod territory so make your own traditions be your own person. This is revolutionary America we're making stuff up as we go.
Here is what I got.
For all of your hard work here is a cool picture of President Obama. He is the epitome of leaning against a wall giving someone the look and saying "Hey".
