Za’atar and Lemon Meatballs In Red Wine Tomato Sauce
My friend, Jen, is staying over with me for a couple of nights this week and so I’ve the pleasure of cooking for her. I’m always happy to have somebody to cook for but what I enjoy about Jen is that’s she is really fussy when it comes to food. She doesn’t take to dairy and eggs and I’m French so I cook eggs in dairy quite a lot. But her visit is great as it’s given me a bit of a challenge and I got to stretch my exotic cooking muscles.
She’s just back from a big solo trip to Portland (you can read about her adventures here) and we had lots of catching up to do so we needed a comforting and fun kind of meal. Nothing too stiff or complicated. This was perfect. A big bowl of steaming balls in tomato sauce with some toasted pita bread for mopping up the fluids. It was delicious. And as Jen calls it, it’s exotic peasant food. Notions, I tell you!
For the sauce, I decided to make the Slow Cooked Tomato Sauce and freeze what we didn’t eat.
For the meatballs, follow the instructions below.
Ingredients:
500 g minced beef; 500 g minced pork; 2 heaped tablespoons of za’atar spices; juice of 1 lemon; 1 bunch of scallions; salt to taste.
Method:
In a large bowl, place the beef and pork and mix them well with your (clean) hands until the two meats are completely amalgamated. Add your za’atar, lemon juice and chopped scallions. Mix and form meatballs. I like mine small enough to eat whole. Fry them gently in a bit of oil and once they are nice and brown on all sides, pour tomato sauce to taste on top.