Hello. My name is Tom Dickinson. I am known here on The Autspot as 'thegfcfchef'. I wanted to share with you one of my favorite comfort food dishes that is featured in my GFCF cookbook, "Where There's A Meal, There's A Way." It's GFCF Spaghetti and Meatballs.
This is a dish that gets me totally stoked. It’s one of the greatest comfort food dishes ever made. Kids love it. Grownups love it. It’s a meal that can be enjoyed by the whole family. When everyone thinks of spaghetti and meatballs, they think of great pasta, great sauce. They also think of parmesan cheese. The cheese part I omitted for obvious reasons but still the flavor is there. I will also explain two techniques that are familiar in the restaurant industry and want to share with you. The knife cut chiffonade, and making a sofrito. So get your Mise En Place together and let’s make something your kids and you will enjoy.
1 12oz. package of GF Spaghetti
1 28 oz. can of tomato puree
1 small can of tomato paste
2 tbsp. Of whole basil leaves, plus extra for garnish
3 slices of bacon, diced (check the GFCF list for brand that is safe.)
1lb. of Ground Beef
½ lb. of Ground Pork
1 Onion
1 Carrot
1 Celery Stalk
4 cloves of Garlic
6 pc. Of GF Sandwich Bread, cubed
½ cup of rice milk
2 jumbo eggs
Olive Oil
2 Tbsp. Brown Sugar
Salt to taste
In a bowl, combine beef, pork, GF bread, rice milk, and eggs
In a food processor, combine, onion, carrot, celery, and garlic. Puree until you get a coarse paste.
Let’s start our sauce. Heat up some oil in a pan and add the diced bacon and begin rendering off the fat.
In another pan, turn the heat up to medium high heat and sauté your sofrito.
Add ¾ of your sofrito to the pan with the bacon and reserve ¼ of the sofrito for you meatballs. Allow the sofrito to cool slightly before mixing it in with the meatball mix.
Add tomato paste to your sofrito and bacon and allow the tomato paste to cook out for several minutes.
Add equal parts tomato sauce and water to the pot and turn heat down to low to let simmer. Right before the sauce is finished, add the fresh basil leaves, uncut, and stir them into your sauce. Add brown sugar to take the acid off the tomatoes and balance out the flavor.
When you have finished seasoning and mixing your meatballs. Form them into golf ball sized balls, and place them in a 400 degree oven for fifteen minutes. Before you do this though, make a tester patty and cook it in a pan to see if you need to adjust seasoning.
Bring hot water to a boil and add your pasta to the water. Gluten free pasta has a tendency to stick, so I add a little bit of olive oil to keep the pasta from sticking. That and stirring the pasta regularly will prevent sticking.
Here’s the trick that Italian chefs have been doing forever. Cook your pasta al dente, strain it, and put it back in the pot. Add enough sauce to it to give the pasta a nice coating and finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. It will absorb the tomato sauce into the noodles and coat the noodles beautifully.
Add your meatballs to the remaining sauce and allow them to simmer in the sauce for a few minutes. Once they have simmered together for a little while, now it’s time to plate everything up.
Take fresh basil leaves, stack them on top of each other, roll them up tightly, and with your knife, cut them into shreds. This is chiffonade. Garnish your plate with your basil and serve.
Makes 6 Servings.
For more information on my cookbook, you can go to http://www.theautspot.com/gfcffusion.webs.com"><A title="GFCF Fusion" href="http://www.theautspot.com/gfcffusion.webs.com">gfcffusion.webs.com</A></A title="GFCF Fusion">
