Philly: Turkey Meatballs and Pasta Primavera

Occasionally we all hit the creative wall with cooking and lack inspiration. I found myself there once or twice this week but, Thursday night was actually pretty good. It took me awhile to figure out what to make for dinner, but soon enough I came up with a pretty good meal.

In college fashion, I probably could have made two meals out of this by making the rich primavera sauce for one meal, and the meatballs for another. But feeling “decadent” I made them a meal together with spaghetti.

As always, I used ground turkey for my meatballs, instead of beef or other ground meat. While you can use beef, you might want to change the added ingredients since they were used to make the meatballs richer in the absence of fat.

What also works well with the Turkey meatballs is the rich sauce I made. Likewise with beef, it is not as necessary and rather over the top. So if you can, try turkey... trust me.

The Primavera sauce is what I like to call “semi-homemade” or as we call it at home, “doctored sauce,” as in jarred sauce with added deliciousness. I added my now infamous red wine sautéed mushrooms which I have never actually featured on this blog. If those are what fancy you, I recommend putting these mushrooms on top of steak or another richer meal. They are delicious on their own as well, and more often than not I end of eating half of the batch right out of the pan with my fingers.

This was a pretty good meal, even though for ONCE neither of us was terribly hungry. Alas, we had lunch which of course we fought over and I actually “won” by getting there first. But I left the rest of the meatballs to him so he could have the rest of the pasta…and two meatball sandwiches.

Note: I labeled this post as "vegetarian" because the Primavera sauce is a vegetarian meal on its own!

Turkey Meatballs and Pasta Primavera: 3 servings (12 meatballs)

Ingredients:

Meatballs:

1 lb. ground turkey

1 egg

1 small onion, very finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 packet of Onion soup mix

1 tbsp. of Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp. olive oil

Splash of half-n-half (optional)

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. dried basil

½ cup of grated parmesan

Sauce:

¾ jar of your favorite tomato sauce

1 package of mushrooms (8 oz.)

1 small onion, roughly chopped

½ bag of fresh spinach

½ cup dry red wine

1 garlic clove, minced

2 tbsp. butter

1 tsp. garlic salt

½ tsp. salt

Pepper

Directions:

For the Meat Balls-Do first:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Start with onions, garlic, parmesan, ground turkey, and egg, mix together.

Add the soup mix, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, garlic powder, and half-n-half.

Mix in basil, and olive oil, mix together.

Lightly oil a baking sheet with olive oil.

Spoon meat with a tablespoon and make into round balls, and place meat balls onto the baking sheet.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until cooked completely through. Check meatballs after 10 minutes to make sure meatballs don’t get over cooked and become dry.

Pull out of oven and serve hot.

For Primavera Sauce: Make while meatballs cook and pasta boils.

In a large pan heat 1 tbsp. butter and garlic over medium heat.

Add chopped onions and begin to brown.

Add mushrooms. Stir and begin to brown. Add the other tbsp. of butter.

Once mushrooms begin to brown, add red wine and reduce heat to low.

Allow mushrooms and onions to absorb the wine, stirring often so the mushrooms don’t burn. Add garlic powder, pepper, and salt.

When almost all the liquid is absorbed, (with a little left) add spinach and cook down.

Once mixture is completely cooked, add tomato sauce and stir well over low heat. Once heated, take off heat and keep covered until pasta and meatballs are cooked.

Serve sauce over spaghetti and with meatballs. Top with grated parmesan and serve with red wine.

If this hasn’t scared you away, (especially since it is very easy,) try this and enjoy!

Love,

The College Cuisiner