SPICY PORK MEATBALLS

Makes: 8 sandwiches For the sauce:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, finely diced

2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes 2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 28-ounce cans plum tomatoes, roughly chopped, with their liquid

For the meatballs:

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 pounds ground pork

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt

4 jarred hot cherry peppers, minced

¼ cup hot cherry pepper pickling liquid

4 slices fresh white bread, minced

3 large eggs

8 hoagie rolls, split, hollowed slightly and toasted Fresh mozzarella cheese, torn into bite-size pieces, for garnish

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees and drizzle olive oil into a 9-by-13-inch baking dish, using your fingers to evenly coat the entire surface. Set aside while you prepare sauce.

2. Heat the olive oil for the sauce in a large pot over medium heat. Add onions, ground pork, red pepper flakes and salt, and cook, stirring constantly, until the meat is thoroughly cooked and onions are soft and beginning to brown, about 15 minutes.

3. Add tomato paste and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and stir constantly until sauce begins to boil. Continue cooking for 35 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so to prevent the sauce on the bottom of the pan from burning. Taste and season with additional salt, if desired.

4. While sauce is cooking, prepare meatballs.

5. Combine the ground pork, salt, cherry peppers, pickling liquid, bread and eggs in a large mixing bowl, and mix by hand until thoroughly incorporated.

6. Roll the mixture into round, golf-ball-size meatballs (about 1 ½ inches), making sure to pack the meat firmly. You should end up with 24 meatballs.

7. Place the balls in the prepared baking dish, being careful to line them up snugly and in even rows vertically and horizontally to form a grid. The meatballs should be touching one another.

8. Roast for 20 minutes, or until the meatballs are firm and cooked through. (A meat thermometer inserted into the center of a meatball should read 165 degrees.)

9. Allow meatballs to cool for 5 minutes in the baking dish while you hollow out and toast the hoagie rolls.

10. Add 3 meatballs to each of the bottom halves of the rolls. Spoon about ¼ cup of sauce on top of each sandwich, then sprinkle torn mozzarella on top. Top with the remaining hoagie roll halves. Serve immediately.

— Recipe from “The Meatball Shop Cookbook” by Daniel Holzman and Michael Chernow