Dinner: American-Italian (Spaghetti and Meatballs)

All of us at dinner

This week we decided to make spaghetti and meatballs. For some reason it just felt like a pasta night. We started off by looking at what we had and went from there. We had a ton of pasta, a starter sauce, half an onion, and some pancetta. We needed to buy meatballs, mixed veggies, cheese, garlic bread, and of course brownies. I happen to always be appointed master chef because I am an HNFE major and my roommates tend to think I know the most about cooking (which is probably true considering one of them almost caught the whole house on fire once while cooking). 

Garlic Bread in Prep

We decided that we wanted to use half of the loaf we got for an appetizer and make the rest into garlic bread for the meal. Now, we decided to get multigrain bread… so it was a little hard to decide when the inside was done cooking. After putting the bread in, I got started on the garlic bread. The main ingredient of course is a heaping amount of butter. After the butter is covering the bread in a rather thick layer, you add some salt free garlic and herb seasoning, a little bit of Italian seasoning, and a generous amount of cracked black pepper. Then you sprinkle cheese on top to your liking. 

Sauce Prep

Sauce with Meatballs

After prepping the bread, I started the water for the pasta and the base of the sauce. For the sauce I started with sautéing the pancetta and onions in a pan. I then added a small amount of olive oil and minced garlic. After letting the onions caramelize, I added the base sauce and meatballs to the pan. At this point, I added some spices and sugar to the sauce and turned it down to simmer. The pasta started cooking and it took barely any time. After draining it, I added some olive oil to make it less sticky. We left everything on the stove to stay warm while we tried the wine and ate the appetizer. Between the three of us, we got two different bottles of wine to try. They were Ebano and Crucero. Both were $7.95. 

Ebano was 2007, 100% tempranillo from the Ribera del Duero region of Spain.

The winery review said: The 2007 Ebano 6 is 100% Tempranillo aged 4 months in French oak. Dark ruby red in color, it displays a pleasant bouquet of cedar, spice box, violets, black cherry, and blackberry. Medium-to fullbodied on the palate with savory flavors and plenty of spice, this racy, vibrant Tempranillo has enough structure to drink well over the next 5-6 years and is a very good value.

My thoughts on the wine: It smelled of berries and dark fruit. It was very mellow with a spicey finish.

Crucero was a 2010, 100% Carmenere from the Colchagua Valley region of Chile.

A winery review said: Deep ruby. Cherry, blackcurrant and dark cherry on the nose. Juicy dark fruit flavors turn slightly bitter in the middle palate and are framed by dusty tannins. Finishes with tightly focused bitter cherry and pepper qualities and decent length. This gets better with a bit of aeration.

My thoughts on the wine: It smelled very peppery. This proved to be true in the taste as well. All you could taste in the wine was pepper. It was cracked black pepper all the way.

Appetizer

The appetizer was Brie cheese with the baked bread. By itself the appetizer was amazing, but then again, I love cheese. With the cheese, the Ebano tasted very spicey. The bread and cheese kind of muted the taste so all you got was the spicy sensation. I believe this was due to the fact that the bread was kind of heavy. The cheese and bread actually made the peppery aspect of the Crucero milder. It helped tone down the wine.

The Dinner

We decided that we needed to have some veggies with our meal because we didn’t add any to the tomato sauce. We had steamed potatoes and green beans in a Parmesan butter sauce. The Ebano wine was again more spicy with the food, however, this particular side brought out the berry in the wine. The Crucero was more muted with this side. The pepper did not take over your mouth. It was very good with this particular dish. Next was the spaghetti and meatballs. The main dish made the Ebano slightly spicy and slightly sweet finish. The Crucero was very spicy with this dish and the pepper explosion made a reappearance.

Me cutting the finished bread

The garlic bread was the last thing that I tried with the wine. The Ebano did not taste much different. It was a tad bit spicy, but mostly tasted like it originally did. The bread brought out the pepper in the Crucero. It was more of a pepper explotion than when I first tried it. I think this is because I used a generous amount of cracked pepper on the bread.

Overall, the dinner was a great experience. Everything was very good… although I probably wouldn’t get the Crucero again. I did end up liking the Ebano, which is interesting because in my initial tasting notes I did not like the wine.