Richard Blais seems like he has the cooking pedigree to teach me a thing or too: French Laundry alum, Top Chef winner, owns a bunch of restaurants, oddly handsome (I only take cooking advice from odd-looking people. They’re the ones who had to win love through cooking with their heart and soul instead of relying on their devilishly good looks). So when I stumbled upon his Spaghetti and Meatball with Bone Marrow recipe on Tasty’s Youtube channel, I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve been craving a good spaghetti and meatballs since watching Matty Matheson’s cooking show and this recipe looked interesting since his meatballs were held together not by the traditional breadcrumbs, egg, and assorted goods but rather with ricotta cheese.
I ended up making a few modifications (as most deluded home cooks do). Richard starts out the recipe using olive oil. I went a little less traditional and used some leftover leaf lard I had in the fridge. Maybe I’m disgracing all the Italians in the world, but who ever said cooking stuff in pig fat was a bad idea? I couldn’t find unseasoned ground pork at the supermarket and I wasn’t about to spend the time trying to find it, so I picked up some mild Italian ground sausage instead.
After cooking the onions and garlic and reserving some for the meatballs, I also added chopped carrots and bell pepper and fried those off before adding tomato paste and red wine. I’ve always noticed that, when using canned San Marzano tomatoes, my sauces have a little too much of an acidic tomato flavor to them unless I add a pinch of sugar to cool it off. Instead of adding granulated sugar, I figured the carrots, bell pepper, and reduced red wine would bring it all together.
As for the wine, I had some leftover Petite Syrah from Paso Robles, CA under the Magistrate label. It wasn’t really my favorite wine in the world – it was definitely drinkable, but the alcohol seemed to overpower any interesting characteristics in the wine. I gave it a 2.5 out of 5 and dumped the last cup left in the sauce.
Here’s where I made a few mistakes. I added another can of water on top of the tomatoes. My initial thought is that there wouldn’t be enough sauce for the meatballs. Instead, after I had simmered the sauce and blended it together for consistency, the sauce ended up being a little too watery and fell off the noodles. I thought about adding pasta water, but I figured the sauce was already too liquidy. I didn’t think adding more water would help, even if it was starchy. I also formed the meatballs a little too loose. I thought I wanted a soft meatball I could sink my teeth into, but they ended up being more crumbly that I’d like. I also think I seared them a bit too much, but that didn’t really affect the flavor too much. The bone marrow I added also didn’t melt. It ended up creating a bunch of fatty byproducts that were floating around in the sauce. I had to filter them out manually! This was my first time cooking with bone marrow… I’m pretty sure I fucked it up somehow.
Even with all of these caveats, the final product was pretty dang delicious. I didn’t need to season the sauce once. The seasoning from the bone marrow and the meatballs gave the sauce a rich meaty flavor (and the tons of fat didn’t hurt either). The meatballs were delicious – you could definitely taste the Italian sausage, but the added herbs and beef made it a joy to eat. I think using ricotta also helped the texture. You know how sometimes meatballs just taste… bready? Not using breadcrumbs is a pretty easy and (looking back) obvious change to make.
Definitely would make again – although prep and dishes for this recipe was a nightmare. I used my cast iron skillet and dutch oven plus a stock pot to boil the pasta and a baking sheet to briefly bake the bones before removing the marrow. Add on top of that all the utensils, mixing bowls, cutting boards, and raw beef/pork and you got some deep sanitizing to do.
Thanks for the great recipe, Richard! I love Crack Shack and need to make a stop at Juniper and Ivy at some point.
Guru of Gluttony 