Paccheri and Meatballs
This encompasses everything that I love. Red sauce, pasta, my Grandmother and her meatballs. The core of this dish is the San Marzano Sunday Sauce. If you make the sauce ahead of time, this is a quick dish to put together since you really just need to cook the pasta which we’ll talk about below. I paired this with meatballs, but you can sub anything you want into this dish: chicken, pork, lamb or nothing at all by keeping just pasta and sauce. I used Paccheri for my pasta, which is a large rigatoni-like pasta. The one I found was ribbed, which is nice because those grooves hold the sauce. If you can’t find Paccheri, then any pasta will do, but if you’re using a tubed pasta such as penne or rigatoni, try to find ones with the ridges or else the sauce slides right off. If you made the sauce ahead of time, you’ll want to warm it up before the pasta is done cooking, so it can be immediately added to the pan, tossed and then served. You should also take your ricotta cheese out of the fridge before you start, and portion out what you’ll be eating and let that temper so it’s not cold when it gets put onto the hot pasta. You’ll want to add a touch of the cooked pasta water to your sauce to give it a touch more seasoning and make use of the starch expelled from the pasta. It’ll give the dish a little extra body that wasn’t there before. I always like to serve pasta on a warmed plate, so you can do this about 5 minutes before you’re ready to plate your food. It’ll also help open up the olive oil before the food hits the plate as well.
Ingredients
1-2 cups of San Marzano Sunday Sauce
Grated Pecorino Romano Cheese
Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese (or skim for less fat). Removed from fridge and tempered.
Fresh Basil (1-2tbsp chopped), reserve a few leaves for garnish
Fresh Cracked Black Pepper
Good Olive Oil
1/2lbs of Paccheri or similar ribbed pasta
Kosher Salt (1tbsp per quart)
5qts water
Equipment
6-8 quart pot for boiling water
Strainer
Small Saucepan or fry pan to toss ingredients together
Plate warmed in the oven for 5 minutes at 200ºF
Prep
Take your ricotta out of the fridge, portion out what you’re going to use and let that temper so it’s not cold when it goes onto the dish. Refrigerate the rest.
Warm up your sauce in a pan large enough to hold the sauce, cooked pasta, meatballs (or similar) with enough extra room to toss them together.
Chop your basil
Heat your oven to 200ºF. Five minutes before serving, place your oven-safe plate in the oven to warm.
Cooking Directions
Bring 5-6 quarts of water to a rolling boil over high heat
Once it’s at a boil, salt the water heavily, and stir to dissolve. It should taste like the ocean. A good starting point is 1 tbsp of kosher salt for every quart of water used.
Add your pasta to the water and cook according to the directions on the bag.
About 1 minute before the pasta is supposed to be finished, take a small amount of that pasta cooking water and add it to your sauce. I usually do about 1 tablespoon per serving of sauce.
If the bag says 8-10 minutes, then I usually cook it for 9 minutes and then take one piece out and test it. Start by splitting the noodle in half and see if it’s cooked all the way through. If you see a white line, that means it needs to cook longer. Even if it’s not cooked through, eat the other half. This is a good way to learn what undercooked pasta feels like. If it’s not cooked, then let it go for another minute, then re-test.
The perfect pasta should be just cooked through, but not overcooked. It should have a little bit of bite to it and not be mushy. Using the uncooked white line as a gauge is a good way to test this. That line should have just disappeared by the time you take it out of the water.
Once it’s cooked remove the pasta from the cooking water and add it to the hot sauce in your other pan.
Kill the heat and add 1tbsp of the grated Pecorino Romano cheese, 1tbsp of the fresh chopped basil and toss to combine.
Plating
Remove your heated plate from the oven
Drizzle 1tsp of good extra virgin olive oil onto the plate
Ground some fresh black pepper over top
Spoon your sauced pasta onto the plate
Add a dollop more of Ricotta cheese on top of the pasta
Drizzle a bit more of the oil over top
Sprinkle 1tsp or so of the grated Pecorino Romano cheese over top
Garnish with the chopped basil and add a few small whole leaves if desired