Meatballs: The Spuntino Way

Ingredients

• 4 slices bread packed (2 cups' worth)
• 0.5 cup bread crumbs dried
• 4 large eggs 
• 0.3 cup flat-leaf parsley finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic minced
• 2 pounds ground beef 
• 0.3 cup pecorino cheese grated for serving
• 15  turns pepper white
• 0.3 cup pinenuts 
• 0.3 cup raisins 
• 1.5 teaspoons sea salt fine
• 6 servings tomato sauce 

Equipment

• bowl
• frying pan
• baking sheet
• oven
• mixing bowl

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 325°F.
2. Put the fresh bread in a bowl, cover it with water, and let it soak for a minute or so.
3. Pour off the water and wring out the bread, then crumble and tear it into tiny pieces.
4. Combine the bread with all the remaining ingredients except the tomato sauce in a medium mixing bowl, adding them in the order they are listed.
5. Add the dried bread crumbs last to adjust for wetness: the mixture should be moist wet, not sloppy wet.
6. Shape the meat mixture into handball-sized meatballs and space them evenly on a baking sheet.
7. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. The meatballs will be firm but still juicy and gently yielding when they're cooked through. (At this point, you can cool the meatballs and hold them in the refrigerator for as long as a couple of days or freeze them for the future.)
8. Meanwhile, heat the tomato sauce in a sauté pan large enough to accommodate the meatballs comfortably.
9. Dump the meatballs into the pan of sauce and nudge the heat up ever so slightly. Simmer the meatballs for half an hour or so (this isn't one of those cases where longer is better) so they can soak up some sauce. Keep them there until it's time to eat.
10. Serve the meatballs 3 to a person in a healthy helping of the red sauce, and hit everybody's portion—never the pan—with a fluffy mountain of grated cheese. Reserve the leftover tomato sauce (it will be super-extra-delicious) and use it anywhere tomato sauce is called for in this book.
11. Excerpted from The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan. Copyright © 2010 by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan. Published by Artisan Books, a division of Workman Publishing Company, Inc.