spaghetti, meatballs

2 photos of pasta ↑ taken for a previous post

This is ordinary spaghetti but it is not ordinary sauce nor ordinary meatballs.

The spaghetti noodles possess a rough texture desirable because it helps sauce adhere to the individual noodle. It is the result of the pasta dough being extruded through old-fashioned bronze dies as contrasted with smooth modern less expensive silicone dies. This particular pasta was purchased from Whole Foods. The cost there was comparable with what you'd expect for the similar product at ordinary grocery store if you were even able to find it, negligibly more than the rapidly mass produced pasta and worth every cent. Look for bronze cut on the packaging. If the company uses bronze dies they will advertise it because it is a matter of pride in production.

The sauce is a combination of dried red chiles purposed for tamales and for enchiladas, here. No tomatoes were harmed in the production of this sauce.

The meatballs are bison and beef. They contain bread and milk with egg along with grated carrot and sautéed onion. The onion was fried so that it would shrink before being included in the mixture. The meatballs are exceedingly wet so that they tend to flatten when baked. A pan with rounded cavities was provided to prevent flat-bottomed meatballs even with that they were so wet they still tended to flatten.  Their initial wetness produced extremely pleasingly moist meatballs.

Alternately, the meatballs could have been cooked directly in the sauce without browning thereby retaining their round shape, if stirring, thus breakage, were kept to a minimum.