Here’s a basic standby you can fall back on for years to come. This is really a recipe for meatballs, which aren’t at all hard to make, and a method for simmering them quickly in store-bought sauce (to keep things simple for now), piling it all onto freshly cooked pasta, topping with cheese and pepper, and sitting down to a perfect meal. Start making the meatballs about an hour before you want to eat, to allow time for shaping and browning them and then simmering them in the sauce while the pasta cooks. Or, even better, make the meatballs and cook them in the sauce a day or two ahead and then reheat them (slowly, over low heat, stirring gently from time to time) while the pasta cooks. The flavors will become deeper this way.
