Pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce recipe

This Nigella recipe is taken from her popular Channel 4 series Nigella Bites, based on her popular book How To Eat.

This is definitely time consuming, but here at least I make no apology for that. And there is nothing like serving up a bowl of pasta with meatballs to make you feel like an Italian mamma out of a Hollywood film. I don't mean one of those redoubtable types in amorphous black: think Sophia Loren in the kitchen. It works for me.

The trick to these meatballs is to keep them small. Don't actually use a teaspoon, but use about a teaspoon's amount of mince to roll each ball. If there are children around, so much the better; they tend to like making these. But otherwise, they're easy enough, and the slow repetitiveness of the action can be rather calming.

To go with these divine meatballs, I like tagliatelle. De Cecco, Spinosi or Cipriani brands are all very good, but making fresh pasta is an experience worth trying. No one's saying you have to make it, but actually once you do try, you'll soon see that it's not difficult. I had a pasta machine for years before I was brave enough to use it. For some reason I thought it would be a performance But I tried and it isn't, and I rather like the mood of peaceful concentration the activity ushers forth. And it's a great way of playing in the kitchen with children: they love turning the handle, which is actually a help, not often the case when the children are cooking with you.

Quantities are easy so long as you remember you need one egg per 100g of 00 flour (now available at most supermarkets), and that on average, one 'egg ' of pasta, as it were, feeds two generously.

For the meatballs

• 250g minced pork
• 250g minced beef
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp freshly grated parmesan
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 3 tbsp semolina or breadcrumbs
• Good grind of black pepper
• 1 tsp salt

For the tomato sauce

• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil (not extra virgin)
• 700g bottle tomato passata
• Pinch of sugar
• Salt and pepper
• 100ml whole milk

For the pasta

• 400g Italian type 00 flour
• Fat pinch of salt
• 4 eggs

How to make the meatballs and tomato sauce

1.Just put everything in a large bowl, and then, using your hands, mix to combine, before shaping into small balls. Place the meatballs on baking sheets or plates that you have lined with clingfilm, and put in the fridge as you finish them.

2.For the sauce, put the onion, garlic and oregano into the process and blitz to a pulp. Heat the butter and oil in a deep wide pan, then scrape the onion-garlic mix into it and cook over a low-medium for about 10 minutes. Don't let the mixture catch, just let it become soft. Add the bottle of passata and then fill the empty bottle half full with cold water. Add this to the pan with the pinch of sugar, some salt and pepper, and cook for about 10 minutes.

3.The tomato sauce will appear thin at this stage, but don't worry as it will thicken a little later. Stir in the milk, and then drop the meatballs in one by one. Don't stir the pan until the meatballs have turned from pink to brown as you don't want to break them up. Cook everything for about 20 minutes, with the lid only partially covering it.

4.At the end of cooking time, check the seasoning as you may want more salt and a grind or two more of pepper.

How to make the pasta

1.Either put the flour (with the salt) in a bowl and crack the eggs into it, or make a mound of flour on a worktop and add the eggs to that. I don't bother to beat them before adding them to the flour, but if you prefer to, then add them gradually, do. Just find the way that you prefer. All you do is mix the flour and eggs together, and then knead the mixture until it all comes together in a satiny mass. Kneading involves no more than pushing the mixture away from you with the heels of your hands and then bringing it back towards you. If you've got an electric mixer with a dough hook, then do use that, but for some reason I don't find it makes the pasta cohere any sooner. And you don't get the relaxing satisfaction of making it by hand.

2.When the pasta silky and smooth, form into a ball, cover with a cloth and leave for 30 minutes to an hour. Then get out your pasta machine, read the instructions and away you go. Two tips first: cut each slice you want to feed through the pasta machine as you go, and put through the no 1 press quite a few times, folding the strip in half and pushing it through again after each time. When the pasta dough's been fed a few times through the no1 slot, pass it through the remaining numbers on the gauge, before pushing it through the tagliatelle-cutters. And I find that the pasta strips cut into tagiatelle better if you leave them hanging over the table or wherever to dry a little first (10 minutes is enough).

3.When you cook the pasta, make sure you've got plenty of boiling salted water and start tasting immediately the water comes back to the boil after you've put the pasta in. Use about a third of the meatballs in their sauce to toss the cooked, drained pasta in and then pour the rest of them over the scantly sauced ribbons in the bowl. This is ambrosia: food to get you through the winter happily.

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