Pasta with Chinese Meatballs?

Leftovers can be circular. My friend Cristina of Expats in Italy often makes Chinese potstickers when she has leftover raw sausages around. I am suggestible, so I do too. I, however, find the local sausages a bit salty, so I mix in some ground lean pork, and then I have leftover potsticker filling.

A person could eat potstickers everyday, but a person could also weigh 400 pounds and resemble the pig from whom all these blessing flow. So, here’s something to do with that leftover filling.

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A word on the filling. Mine consists of the meat from inside the sausages and about an equal amount of lean ground pork, a few minced scallion tops, some grated ginger, some wine vinegar, a bit of toasted sesame oil, and sometimes some crushed red chili bits. It takes about 5 minutes to put that all together.

So, to make this fusion pasta, take what you have left of that filling and make it into tiny meatballs, between 1/2 and 3/4″ — I am not accurate. Start water for pasta and bring it to a boil. When it boils, add some salt and put in about 130 – 200 grams of hard wheat pasta, not egg pasta. Here you see rotini.

Heat a frying pan that is big enough to hold everything including the pasta before you put the pasta into the water. What I am showing is enough for two servings. When the pan is hot, add a little olive oil, then the meatballs. Slide the pan back and forth to keep the meatballs round and from sticking. When they are no longer pink outside, add about 1/4 cup of heavy cream. By this time your pasta is boiling and you can dip out some water from the pot to thin the cream.

Add about 1/2 pound clean spinach leaves (or some leftover steamed spinach if that’s what you have) and continue to cook, stirring. When the pasta is done, drain it and throw it into the sauce pan, toss around a bit and then serve smoking hot. Some toasted sesame seeds would be a great garnish, but no cheese, please. I liked this a lot.