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Meatballs that aren't coooked (or at least finished) in tomato sauce have a different flavor from one's that do. Not better or worse, but different .... and made a nice change of pace. Finish (or reheat) your meatballs by frying them in a pan with just enough olive oil to stop them from sticking. You want the surfaces to sorta crust and brown, so they have a nice, ever so slight 'crunch' to them.
For an extraordinarily simply macaroni, try this:
Angel hair or spaghtettini or thin spaghetti
Cook as directed.
Olive oil
Garlic
Anchovies
Black pepper
Parmesan cheese
Mince the garlic very, very fine. If you have a garlic press or microplane, use that. You want the garlic to disappear as much as possible. Use an amount to suit your taste. I'd suggest two cloves, minimum, but we often use six or eight.
Saute the garlic in about 1/8 - 1/4 cup olive oil. In actuality, I don't measure. Use enough to cover well the bottom of a 10" frying pan. You'll need enough olive oil to generously coat all the pasta. The olive oil is 99% of the volume of the sauce.
Take the anchovies out of the can and pat off as much of the oil in which they're packed as you can. The more oil, the 'fishier' the sauce will taste. If you remove most of the oil, it won't taste at all fishy. You can add back whatever amount of this packing oil as you wish to make it more fishy, if you like that. Again, with the oil patted off, this dish won't taste fishy.
Mash up the anchovies. Use a fork, a knife, even a mortar and pestle. You want the anchovies reduced to a paste.
Add the anchovies to the olive oil and stir to dissolve the anchovies. The oil will turn slightly brown from the addition of the anchovies.
Add pepper to taste.
Drain the macaroni and **very quickly** add the olive oil sauce. Angel hair in particular has a propensity to lump up and stick very quickly. The olive oil sauce will instantly prevent this.
Now remember, you don't want the macaroni swimming in olive oil. You want just enough to coat it all and maybe see a small puddle of it in the very bottom of the bowl.
Shave or grate some parmesan over the pasta and serve.
Optionally, you could sprinkle this with some chopped herbs. Parlsey alone is fine, but you could add some oregano, or even both oregano and basil. Clasically, however, there are no herbs in it. We, however, like some herbs in it ....... at least some chopped flat leaf parsley.
Have the parmesan on the side for people to add it to taste. Between the parm and the 'chovies, you don't need to even go near a salt shaker .... 'cept to salt the macaroni water, of course. Don't omit that step.
The meatballs, with their nice delicate crunch and moist centers, along with some crusty beard to dip in the macaroni bowl, make this extremely simply meal much more than the sum of its humble parts.
Apart from making meat balls, this whole thing takes as long as it takes to boil the water and cook the macaroni. It really is that simple and quick.
Buono Apetito!
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