My New Favourite Way To Make Meatballs.

J'adore the Food Network. I could watch cooking shows for hours and hours, and in fact do. I am a little sad about how much of the programming time has been taken over by "reality" cooking shows/competitions. I find that there is increasingly less cooking and more drama happening on a regular basis. Honestly if I wanted to watch drama I'd be on a different station.

So please Food Network Gods, if you're out there and you hear me, can the reality shows, nix the constant re-runs of 10 episodes of restaurant make-over and amp up the cooking. Afterall you are called The FOOD Network.

One show I surely can't get enough of is Jamie At Home. So it's no surprise how excited I was when I was given the book for a gift. And for the record it is quite lovely. A little while ago I brought this very book over to my friends house so that we could cook dinner for her parents. We decided on the quick sausage meatballs with tomato and basil sauce spaghetti. I'm not really fond of the name but I definitely like the dish.

I honestly don't know why I never thought to make meatballs out of sausages before. Cut the casing on the sausage and push the meat out in little hunks, form them into meatballs, cook. It's simple yet delicious. And depending on what kind of sausages you buy, the flavour combination is endless.

Since we were making a pasta dish we decided to accompany it with some bruschetta. Nothing like fresh bread piled high with tomatoes, onions, garlic....yum.

Everything about this dish was simple but tasty. I've always liked how Jamie Oliver can jump from basic meals to more lavish dishes, but he always builds a really solid flavour base. As any good chef can do. Even the pasta sauce, not much more than crushed tomatoes, basil, garlic and a couple simple spices was bang on. I do also happen to love a good pasta sauce...and I'm fussy. To be honest I just about never order pasta when I go out for dinner because I am almost always disappointed with it. But I will eat it constantly at home in every way, shape and form.

Okay, so I have a bit of a confession to make now. Despite all the camera action going on in the kitchen that day we somehow, in our excitement to eat, forgot to take a picture of the main dish. I have all the bits and pieces documented but the final thing all put together...not so much. So I've been forced to include the picture from the book as a substitute. I'll try harder to tamp down my overeagerness to eat next time to take a picture.

By some strange fluke, I did somehow manage to take pictures of the super cute bowls that we ate from. I think my priorities got a little mixed up that day. Frankly, I blame the pre, during and post dinner drinks.