Romans have strong opinions about what goes in to a meatball. Rachel Roddy serves hers two ways: a solitary sphere atop pasta, with the rest accompanied by buttery mash the next day
It wasn't exactly a tut; more a click of the tongue. I heard it after I asked my Roman butcher at Testaccio market if he would put a sausage through the mincer with the beef, as I was making meatballs. I know the sound well. It means no. My Sicilian partner, Vincenzo, makes it so often it has been demoted from irritating to ordinary. As the mincer growled, I turned to see where the tut had come from, and found a signora in her late 60s wearing a purple cardigan, now looking at me shaking her head. "Non si mette la salsiccia nelle polpette, cara" - you don't put sausage in meatballs, dear.
A few years earlier this would have made me upset, or cross and then frustrated as I searched for the words in Italian to defend myself and my sausage. These days I am used to impertinent opinions about food; I even like them, and was just about to voice my own opinion when another, much older woman, did it for me. "Certo, puoi mettere le salsicce nelle polpette, cara," she said - of course you can put sausage in meatballs, dear - turning to the butcher who was wrapping the meat in red and white paper, and then to the couple behind her, herding people into the discussion.
When you ask an Italian about meatballs, or when they are simply offering you their opinion, one thing is (almost always) certain: their mother, their grandmother, their aunt or their great aunt made the best polpette. Beyond that, there will be some idiosyncratic idea about how exactly they should be made, or cooked, or eaten.
In Vincenzo's family, it was nonna Sara who made the best polpette in tomato sauce in the village. The whole family knows the recipe well; ground beef, bread soaked in milk, grated pecorino, chopped parsley and an egg, moulded, rested, fried and then poached in lots of tomato sauce.
But nobody - not even uncle Liborio, who is a chef - is able to make them taste quite like the polpette Sara made when they were growing up. Which makes sense - can we ever truly replicate the tastes of our childhood? Making nonna's meatballs is like me trying to recreate my grandma's Lancashire tattie hash. I come extremely close, but can never truly recreate the comforting, steamy atmosphere of my grandparents' living room on a Tuesday night eating tea watching John Craven's Newsround.
Back to the meatballs. Having settled upon your ingredients, which in my case are ground beef, the controversial sausage or ground pork, bread soaked in milk (essential addition I think a giving a nice bready plumpness), parsley, mint (if you have it), a flick of nutmeg, parmesan or pecorino, salt (steady if you have added a seasoned sausage), pepper and a whole egg. Resting the just-moulded meatballs is advisable, because, as my friend Carla puts it, it lets the flavours settle down and balls firm up.
Now, how to cook them. Traditionally, meatballs are fried before being united with the sauce. This creates rich, slightly caramelised juices. However, some of the best, most tender meatballs I have eaten have been poached directly in the sauce. But taken and tried out plenty of advice, I generally bake my meatballs briefly in the oven, which I find a comfortable halfway house between frying and poaching. Once baked, I tip them and any juices collected at the bottom of the tin, into a generous quantity of tomato sauce. Then I poach the meatballs for 20 minutes or so.
Finally, how to serve them? The answer is: however you want. I've adopted the Roman habit of serving the sauce with pasta, and then meatballs as a second course or, in keeping with my "cook once, eat twice" philosophy, a separate meal. In Rome you will notice that many braised meat dishes - oxtail stew, beef rolls, pork ribs and meatballs - are served this way. So, on the first day we eat some of the sauce, by now rusty red and richly flavoured, with spaghetti or penne pasta. I sometimes find, as do several Italians I know, that a single meatball finds its way on to my plate waiting to be mashed into the pasta and sauce. The next day I serve the meatballs themselves - even tastier after a good night's rest in the remaining sauce - with bread, or better still, buttery mashed potato, rice or couscous.
Serves 4
60g soft white breadcrumbs, preferably from stale bread
60ml milk
400g minced beef
200g minced pork or a fat sausage
1 egg
30g parmesan, grated
A grating of nutmeg
2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley and mint, finely chopped
Salt and black pepper
For the sauce
6 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
A pinch of dried chilli
750g fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped
3x400g tins plum tomatoes, chopped
1 Put the breadcrumbs in a small bowl with the milk and infuse for 10 minutes, or until the bread absorbs the milk. Mix together the meatball ingredients and season with salt and pepper. Using your hands, mould into balls roughly 35g in weight, then put them on a baking tray to rest while you make the sauce.
2 Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic and roughly chop the fresh tomatoesWarm the olive oil in a large, deep frying pan and gently cook the onion, garlic and chilli for about 15 minutes or until soft and fragrant. Add the fresh tomatoes and cook for 10 minutes.
3 Add the tinned tomatoes, bring to a lively simmer, then reduce to a gentle one for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, breaking up the tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon.
4 Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Bake the meatballs for 15 minutes, turning them once, until they are just starting to brown.
5 After 45 minutes, the sauce should be thick and rich. Blast it with an immersion blender for a smoother consistency, or simply poach the meatballs in the sauce for a further 15 minutes. Then allow the meatballs and sauce to sit for at least 30 minutes before serving.
First meal
Cook 400g of pasta in plenty of well-salted, fast-boiling water. Put a little of the sauce in the bottom of a warm serving bowl, add the drained pasta, some more sauce and stir. Divide between four bowls, top with a single meatball and pass a bowl of grated parmesan around.
Second meal
Boil and mash 1kg of potatoes with butter and a little warm milk. Season with plenty of black pepper. Gently reheat the meatballs in their remaining sauce and serve with the mash. Alternatively, serve with couscous.
Meatballs: sausage in or out? Photograph: Elena Heatherwick/Guardian