Daddy ...stop cooking meatballs please

There is nothing better that cooking from scratch,

"I mean nothing" well maybe sex, but it depends on who your cooking with!

Anyway I'm kind of an experimenter in the kitchen and when I really like a dish that I make, I then make it a couple of more times and tweak any flavours, you know how it is. ("an extra clove of garlic here, I should have throw in a bay leaf there") So I'm on a mission and my kids are as always first to taste my new favourite food.. so I start tweaking, and mince is on offer this week in the co-op across the road!

So I'm on the hunt for the perfect quick and simple poppetia napolitan, you may know it as meat balls and tomato sauce:

I use 500gm mince meat
2 cloves of garlic
1 red onion
1 whole raw egg
3 'cream crackers'
2 table spoon of olive oil
6 medium tomatoes, (on the vine are best)
1/3 tube of tomato puree
1 table spoon of flour
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoon of dry mixed herbs
Rock salt / fresh cracked pepper
1 pint of water

That's the base and it's so easy to make. basically every thing that you use you want to finely chop, apart from the mince...duh of course and the crackers, more about the crackers soon...
OK do not chop your bay leaves and do not attempt to chop the tomato puree either.I've got to go slow just in case, don't want to loose anybody here...

1. Take the 3 cream crackers and put them in one of those food bags and crush em good, when you're finished the food bag should look like a little bag of breadcrumbs.
2. Put the mince in a big mixing bowl, add 1/4 of the the finely chopped onion and garlic 1/3 mixed herbs the whole raw egg, put the bag of cracker crumbs in on top add a good pinch of rock salt or 3 if your me.. followed by a the cracked pepper
3. Get your hands in and mix all your ingredients in the bowl for about 3 minutes until you have 1 giant meat ball.
4. Make bite sized meatballs out of the giant and gently sauté in a good large pan with the 2 tbl spoons of olive oil for about 4 minutes.
5. Now into the large pan add the freshly chopped tomatoes the puree the rest of the chopped garlic, onion and herbs and the flour, stir well on a low heat for a few minutes. Add the water and bay leaf and simmer slow for 30 mins that's it really

The Finale- almost
So I'm tweaking away, and loving the results, I've almost perfected it... But after eating home made meatballs in tomato sauce 3 day's out of 5 my 7yrs old daughter begged me "please stop cooking meatballs daddy"

I promised to do something different tomorrow, but I wasn't happy about it! :(