Rooiberg Winery sent me a bottle of their award-winning Red Muscadel. If you didn’t know, muscadel is actually a sweet, dessert-style red – the kind of thing you could drink on crushed ice and pairs beautifully with warm desserts topped with vanilla ice cream or a very good dark choccie.

I, however, am a strange non-rule following person – the kind who’s happy to order dessert for breakfast and pair margaritas with, well, everything – so I cracked this baby open, added two ice cubes, and sipped away while making spaghetti and meatballs and it went down a treat. It also went into my spaghetti sauce – a nice splash to replace my usual teaspoon of sugar – but don’t you dare tell Rooiberg I used it to cook!

So! You want my easy and delish spaghetti and meatballs recipe? It’s a Frankenstein monster of several recipes I found online ages back that I’ve tweaked and tweaked to create a delish dish of my own, so here it goes.

Ingredients

12 Cream Crackers
500g ground meat (I like to use beef or pork or a mix of both)
1 egg
2 Tbs mustard
1 Tbs dried oregano
pepper and salt to taste
1 tsp garlic powder
Worcestershire sauce
spaghetti
olive oil to fry
1 small onion, chopped finely
1 tsp chilli (I use Sambal Oelek)
1 tsp garlic, crushed
a tin of chopped tomatoes
1 Tbs balsamic vinegar

Method

Put your crackers in a plastic bag and stomp on it with your fave pair of boots until they’re teensy little crumbs. Extra points is they cry ‘no mommy, no!’
Mix up your meat, cracker crumbs, egg, mustard, oregano, pepper, salt, garlic powder and add a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce.
Roll your mixture into balls and slap them on a greased up pan. (I use Spray n Cook so I’ll probably get cancer and die.)
Drizzle your bolletjies with a bit of olive oil and stick then into a 220-degree oven for 20 to 25 mins until the meat is cooked through and they look nice and crispy.
Boil up your spaghetti. (I don’t have to tell you how to do that, right?
To make the sauce fry up your onion, garlic and chilli in a bit of oil then add the tinned tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. I then add random things like a bit of sugar (or a splash of muscadel!), a bit of salt, Let it boil up and then simmer it for a bit.
All done? Mix up your sauce, spaghetti and meatballs, top it with Parmesan cheese if you’re a rich biets and BOOM you’re ready to eat!

Bon apetit chicas!

Love, love

Leigh