Jono & Jules do food & wine

This is a great tomato sauce and of course can be made without meatballs and used in all sorts of things. We like to make the entire recipe and freeze the leftover meatballs in the sauce for tasty meals for kids or when we don’t have time to cook. They’re good served with linguine –  toss the pasta with the meatballs and sauce before serving with some grated Parmesan.

Wine Suggestion: with the higher proportion of pork in the meatballs we think a medium bodied red works better than richer, fuller-bodied wines with this. We went with a Chateau Manoir du Gravoux from Castillon in Bordeaux. A Merlot, Cabernet Franc blend with a lovely freshness and pure, mineral character made a good match.

Pork & Beef Polpette with Tomato Sauce – makes about 40 meatballs and 1.5 litres of sauce

FOR THE TOMATO SAUCE:

• 100ml extra virgin olive oil
• 1 onion, finely sliced
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• scant ½ tbsp fine salt
• ¾ tsp black pepper
• small pinch of chilli flakes
• 750g fresh tomatoes, quartered
• 3 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
• 1 small handful of oregano, chopped
• caster sugar, if needed

FOR THE POLPETTE:

• 1kg minced pork
• 500g minced beef
• 3 medium eggs
• scant ½ tbsp fine salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 150g breadcrumbs
• small pinch of dried chilli flakes
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• ½ handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped
• cooked linguine pasta and grated Parmesan cheese, to serve

Heat half the oil in a saucepan on a medium-low heat and sweat the onion, garlic, salt, pepper and chilli for 15 minutes. Add the fresh tomatoes and the rest of the oil and cook gently for another 15 minutes.

Add the tinned tomatoes and simmer on a very low heat for an hour.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the oregano. Season with a little sugar if needed, then whizz using a hand-blender or food processor for a few minutes.

Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas 7.

Combine all of the meatball ingredients and mix together well with your hands, then roll into golf ball sized meatballs. They should weigh about 45g each. Place on a large greased baking tray and roast for 10 minutes, turning once, until starting to brown.

Add the meatballs to the hot sauce and poach for 10 minutes with the lid on.

Serve with linguine and grated Parmesan.

(Original recipe from Polpo by Russell Norman, Bloomsbury, 2012.)