In Italy, meatballs can be almost anything from the bready meatballs of Naples to the tiny meatballs made in Abruzzo, to meaty polpetti served in a brown sauce I enjoyed near the Pantheon to the meatballs I had at Checchino dal 1887, a restaurant in Rome’s Testaccio neighborhood. These were meatless pallotte cacio e ova, or cheese and egg balls. They are skillet-fried and finished in a quick tomato sauce.

Checchino dal 1887 backs up to a massive mound of broken amphora from Roman days and is across the street from one of Rome’s smaller but more interesting markets, Mercato di Testaccio. Checchino bills itself as the best place for “Fifth Quarter” cooking, which means the head, tail, legs, and entrails, not the prime cuts.

A generous amount of pecorino Romano, plus eggs, breadcrumbs and a few aromatics are combined to form a dough-like mixture. In many older recipes, the bread is stale but fresh is fine. We added some nutty Parmesan to balance pecorino’s funkiness. Although these balls are not rolled in breadcrumbs, they end up having a fritter-like crispness due to the cheese. After frying (in just a half cup of olive oil), the meatballs are finished in a quick-simmered four-ingredient tomato sauce for two to three minutes.

Chris Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."