Linguine with Turkey Meatballs & light Tomato sauce

I was shopping at my local Pavillion's looking to score some deals, and they had a sale on their Safeway-brand fresh Linguine. Intrigued, I bought 2 boxes and planned out to have a light dinner. I also picked up some ground turkey, bread crumbs, fresh organic basil and a box of diced yellow onions.

I created my own recipes today, so here's my try to list them out.


Turkey Meatballs

• 1lb package of ground turkey (you can use your choice of beef or chicken as well)
• 1 cup of bread crumbs (I used Kellogg's brand as a recommendation from my good friend J's)
• 1 tbsp Italian seasoning
• 1/4 cup of diced or minced onions
• 1 tbsp chopped garlic (In my household, we pre-chop our garlic in a food processor)
• 1 egg
• Freshly ground pepper
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (for pan-frying)

My boyfriend did the prep in mixing all of the ingredients together for me :) First he mixed all of the dry ingredients together with the meat and added the egg as a last addition, in order to cut down a little bit on the mess. He hand formed them into big sizes. The cooking portion was done by me.



Heat up the pan on high with 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to coat the pan. When hot, add the meatballs in. Pan sear the meatballs for 4 minutes on each side. After both sides are done being seared, lower the temperature to medium and put a lid on top of the pan to finish cooking the meatballs through steaming them for 3 minutes.

After finishing the meatballs, set them aside so you can work on the tomato sauce. This sauce is supposed to be very light and focused more on the tomato chunks. If you want to make it more sauce-y, add a small can of tomato sauce to this recipe.

Light Tomato Sauce

• a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  
• 2 tbsp butter or margarine
• 2-3 tbsp chopped onions
• 1 tbsp chopped garlic
• 1 1/2 tbsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 tsp pepper
• fresh basil
  

Start off by heating up a saucepan on high. Add olive oil and when hot, add garlic and onions together. Pan fry them until both are cooked together (slight browning, clear onions). At this point, add the can of crushed tomatoes to the mix, and bring down heat to medium. Add spices and mix in the butter. Heat sauce thoroughly, cook until tomatoes are nice and soft. While waiting for the pasta to cook, put the heat of the saucepan on low and add the fresh basil.

Meatballs and sauce waiting for the pasta water to heat up.

I'm assuming everyone knows how to cook pasta, but I'll put in a little few suggestions. Add salt and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil to the water, in order to give your pasta some extra flavor and to help the pasta from sticking together.

Here's what the finished product looks like (with some shredded Parmesan cheese added to the top):

My serving suggestion: