Looks like it just needs some Pasta

Time: 2 Hours

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 1/5

I’ve made a few meatballs throughout the course of this blog. Interestingly, I’ve haven’t made one that’s finished off in a tomato sauce. Does the sauce really need to be there in this recipe? Especially when it essentially doubles the work time? Let’s find out with this recipe from the Zaytinya Cookbook.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

Spiced Tomato Sauce Ingredients

This is half the work (maybe more)

Meatballs Ingredients

This is the other half of the work (maybe less)

I used all the ingredients that this recipe calls for. I don’t think you’ll have a hard time finding anything, except for maybe the boxed or canned chopped tomatoes. I didn’t think I’d be able to find them at the grocery store that I go to, but they were there to my surprise.

Tools:

Bowl
Sauté Pan
Pot
Immersion Blender

Cooking Review:

Spiced Tomato Sauce: 1 hour

Prep: 16 minutes

To prep for the tomato sauce, I sliced my onions and garlic and cored and diced the tomatoes.

Cooking Garlic & Onions: 8 minutes

After warming the olive oil in the pot, I added the garlic and onions. The recipe says to cook them until they are lightly golden, about 12 minutes. This isn’t the first time that this cookbook has been pretty far off with the cooking of the onions and garlic. It only took 6 minutes to get pretty nice color on them.

Simmer Tomatoes: 21 minutes

I added the cinnamon and bay leaf to the pot followed by the diced and chopped tomatoes and other seasonings. I mixed everything together and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

Finishing Sauce: 6 minutes

To finish the sauce, I removed it from the heat and used an immersion blender to help emulsify the remaining olive oil into the sauce. Finally, I seasoned to taste.

Meatballs in Spiced tomato Sauce: 1 Hour

Mixing and Forming Meat: 12 minutes

After grating the garlic, I put the ground beef in a bowl and mixed in the garlic, salt, pepper, and cumin. Then, I formed the meatballs and set them aside.

Searing meatballs: 10 minutes

I heated the olive oil in the sauté pan and seared the meatballs in two batches. Each batch took about 4 minutes to get good color on most sides of the balls. After each batch, I transferred the meatballs to a paper towel lines plate.

Finishing: 27 minutes

I added two cups of the tomato sauce I made earlier to the sauté pan and returned the meatballs to the pan. I coated the meatballs with the sauce and let them cook in the simmering sauce for 20 minutes. Once they were done, I added the capers. After plating, I sprinted some go the chives, which were chopped during the simmering, along with the feta cheese.

Analysis:

The sauce it good, but not great. I’ve definitely made and had better tomato sauces. I think it might be missing a lot of the brightness that makes other tomato sauces so good. The meatballs are pretty average. They’re on the dry side, which could be just because I let them simmer too long, but the flavor is lacking, too. They really just taste like plain ground beef with maybe a little cumin flavor. So, in this case, the sauce is really the star of the show, but the star doesn’t shine very brightly. It’s weird that capers and chives are added, as the teaspoon amount called for is essentially nothing and they contribute as much to the recipe. The cheese it nice, but it doesn’t really do too much to help things out. I’m going to give this recipe a 6/10. For two hours of work, it’s really not a satisfying end result. It’s not bad, but it’s not something that warrants 2 hours. You can make something just as good, if not better by making your own meatballs in a similar manner and cooking them in a decent store bought sauce. You might even save some money that way, too.

P.S.

I run a leather working business and I’m proud to show off some of my new products! If you like want to pick anything up, you can use code THEANALYST for 10% off any order at MPW Werks. Thanks for reading!