Recipe - Italian Meatball Sandwich

MEATBALLS
1 pound Ground round or ground chuck
One half pound Ground pork
1 One half cup Grated cheese parmesan or
Romano or a hard, well aged
goat cheese
2 cup Fine dry bread crumbs
One good handful dried
crushed parsley
2 Eggs
Three fourths cup Milk
Salt
Pepper
Garlic salt if you want

SAUCE
1 qt Tomato sauce
1 small Can tomato paste
1 pt Whole tomatoes, crushed
Red wine
Olive oil
Salt pork
Salt, pepper, garlic salt
to taste
Dry sweet basil
Dry marjoram
1 small Onion optional
4 Cloves garlic, minced

(optional ingredients: cubed eggplant, mushrooms, fresh sweet red pepper
pieces, dried crushed hot red chili, black Italian oliveschopped, green
Greek oliveschoppedand anything else you can think of or want)

Prepare the sauce: Put 2 tbsp of olive oil in a heavy large pot. Cut two
slices from the salt pork about 1/4" thick each and trim off the rind
(skin). Cut up the salt pork into small pieces. Heat up the olive oil to
mediumhigh and add the salt pork. It should just barely sizzle. Finely
chop up the onion and add it to the pot. Saute until the onion becomes
translucent. Add the minced garlic and saute just until the garlic begins
to turn golden. At this point you can add any of the optional stuffchop
it up to small pieces and stir the mixture in the pot well. Add one good
handful of crushed dried basil, 1 medium handful of crushed dried marjoram
and stir everything well. Saute all for about 34 minutes. Add the can of
tomato paste. Clean the can out with the wine and add two cans of the wine.
Stir well and add the whole tomatoes. Salt, pepper, and garlic salt to
taste and let this cook for about 10 minutes until everything is mixed well
and bubbly. Add the sauceadjust the seasonings if you like. Reduce the
heat to simmer and let cook for about 1 hour.

Prepare the meatballs: Place all ingredients, except the milk, in a large
bowl and mix well. If the mixture seems to be very sticky add One half cup milk
and mix well again. We like very soft meatballs and the more milk you add
the softer the final product will be, so you will have to decide how soft
you want the meatball to be and adjust the milk. I would add all of it. Mix
well. Form a small portion of the meat mixture into a ball about 2" in
diameter. Form the rest of the meatballs in the same manner. An ice cream
scoop makes them just about the right size.

You can either fry or bake the meatball (add lots of flavor) or you can
broil it (removes most of grease and fate). Whichever method you use, make
sure you cook them to a nice crust on the outside. Drop the meatballs into
the sauce and simmer for one more hour. Add a little water to the sauce if
it seems to be real thick.

To make the sandwich use a crusty rollhard roll (crusty on the outside,
soft on the inside)slice in half. Cut one or two meatballs in half and
put on one slice of the roll. Spoon a little sauce over all, sprinkle with
some Italian cheese (parmesan or romano) add a hot roasted chili pepper or
a sweet roasted pimentoput the other half of the roll on top. Open mouth
very wide and bite into sandwich. Enjoy!

Diane dmferrell@happy.uccs.edu

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini