Italian meatballs in tomato and basil sauce.

There's been a new addition to the Channel Five line up recently in the form of Cooking the Books. Each episode is themed around the best selling UK cookery books by celebrity chefs, where celebrity chef will cook one of the dishes in the book they have published, the "compete" against another chef at cooking similar dishes as well as teaching another celeb how to cook something new. It's jam packed! And they even keep a blog of the recipes and readers comments.

Recently, Ainsley Harriott was on and cooking Italian meatballs in tomato and basil sauce and I thought I'd give this a go, especially seeing as we've a lot of spare mince to use. The recipe for this on the blog left out a few ingredients in the ingredients list which I've fixed below:

Italian meatballs in tomato and basil sauce

Serves 3
Prep time 10 minutes
Cooking time 35 minutes

Ingredients
Olive oil

Meatballs
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 ½ tsp dried oregano
3 or 4 slices rindless smoked bacon
500g lean minced beef
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
75g fresh white breadcrumbs (or 1-2 slices bread grated into breadcrumbs)
Leaves from ½ a 20g packet parsley, chopped (or 1 tbsp dried parsley)
1 medium egg, beaten
Salt and pepper to season.

Sauce
A small knob of butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
200g can chopped tomatoes
350g passata
1 ½ tbsp basil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Recipe
1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a frying pan, add the onion, garlic and oregano and cook over a medium heat for 5-6 minutes until soft. Leave to cool slightly.

2. Put the bacon into a food processor and finely chop using the pulse button.

3. Add the minced beef, bacon, lemon zest, breadcrumbs, parsley and cooked onion mixture to a large bowl. Mix together well with your hands.

4. Add the egg, ½ teaspoon salt and plenty black pepper and mix again.
5. Shape the mixture into walnut-sized balls using slightly wet hands.
6. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in the frying pan. Add the meatballs, a few at a time, and brown all over, then transfer to a flameproof casserole. (Or if like me you dont' have a gas cooker but electric instead, transfer to a large pot)

7. Add a little more olive oil if necessary to the frying pan and, when hot, add the butter, onion and garlic and fry gently until softened. Add the chopped tomatoes, passata, ½ teaspoon salt and some black pepper.

8. Pour the sauce over the meatballs, partly cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring gently now and then so as not to break up the meatballs. Stir in the basil and serve with some egg tagliatelle pasta or mashed potato.