Meatballs in Red Sauce with Spinach

For a special Friday night, I decided to make some meatballs with a special red sauce we had bought a little bit ago. I put it on top of a bed of garlic and onion sauteed spinach. I have no clue how much it cost nor do I really care, this was a special occasion meal. The most expensive piece to the whole dish was obviously the sauce. We had bought it from one of our local Williams-Sonoma artisan food fairs.

I wish I could say that everything we used was fresh, but I certainly wasn't going to grind my own pork nor did I have time to properly spice fresh ground pork. I totally cheated, but whatever, it tasted good.

First things first I took the sausages out of their casing. After that I added a few spices, cracked in the egg, mixed that all up, added in the breadcrumbs, and mixed it all up again. I portioned that mix into 15 sort of even meatballs, and then chilled them for half an hour.

After the meatballs had settled and chilled I baked them for about 18 minutes, and they were mostly cooked through at that point. I finished them by putting them in the red sauce that I had brought to a boil and was simmering to keep warm.

Speaking of that sauce, it came from a local company called barefoot charlie's food co, and it was his red "simply awesome" sauce. It had a really nice sweet flavor to go with heavy hints of roasted garlic and small hints of basil. The roasted garlic, especially the pieces that were in there, had an amazing flavor.

For a little vegetable matter, I sauteed the bag of frozen spinach that we had with some garlic and onions. I prefer using fresh spinach, but for whatever reason it's hard to find in grocery stores here in NYC. I don't get it, but you work with what you have. It added a little freshness despite being not fresh at all, and it was a good base for the meatballs.

Here's the finished product! Overall the dish had a ton of flavor. I undersalted the vegetables on purpose as I knew that the meatballs, since they were made with sausage meat, would have enough salt and flavor on their own. The sweetness and garlicky flavor from the sauce added even more depth and really finished things off nicely.

We paired the meal with a half bottle of a nice 2001 Crianza (that's M's hand). It was a luscious and mildly sweet red that paired perfectly with the dish. It was the icing on the cake of a wonderful, home-cooked celebration meal.