Italian Meatballs

I love meatballs. I've had fancy, lowbrow, Swedish, baseball-sized, Himalayan, frozen, crockpotted, sandwiched, fried, marble-sized and other varieties I can't even remember. If there's a meatball on a menu, I'm a sucker for it.

So, yesterday when I decided to add a carnivorous twist to my vegetarian spaghetti sauce, meatballs were the obvious choice. But not just rolled up pieces of ground beef - I wanted something that would stand up to the long-simmered tomato sauce.

2 pounds of lean ground beef, a half pound of ground pork, a little less than a half pound each of pancetta and prosciutto cut into tiny pieces, 3 eggs, some bread crumbs, some red wine, spices and Italian parsley, tossed in a bowl and mixed. I browned them in olive oil, then put them in a dutch oven for an hour at 350, covered in the spaghetti sauce. The recipe makes too darned many meatballs - a crowd of 10 barely put a dent in them.

Few things are better than meatballs on an autumn afternoon, but two things that come close are the aroma of spaghetti sauce and meatballs filling the house, and leftovers.