SERIOUSLY SPEEDY SPICY SPAGHETTI MEATBALLS

Spaghetti and meatballs swimming in a marinara sauce… Hmmm, it’s the kind of comfort food one really wants to turn to at the end of a long day. You could be forgiven for thinking that it’s Italian, but you’d be hard pressed to find beef meatballs on spaghetti in Italy. This dish is in fact as American as they come. Its roots are Italian to be sure, tracing back to Italian immigrants arriving in America about a century ago.

Beef was more readily available in the US than in Italy, spaghetti was about the only pasta for sale at the time and tinned tomatoes were the order of the day. So combine them they did. As with all brilliantly simple recipes, this one has stood the test of time. We honour the old-school way and use tinned tomatoes for our marinara sauce. Zero effort is what we want, so we pick the one that already has onions in it. As for the meatballs? No faffing about there either – we simply squeeze the filling out of beef sausages. This is seriously speedy stuff. Just what you want midweek.