My pores weeped Allium Sativum for 24 hours, I became lonely. Seventeen cloves of garlic later, not even my daughter would kiss me good night. While the meatballs themselves were not to blame the combination of amazing flavours culminated in a shit load of garlic. All four of us on this MCC agreed that garlic is good… Really good.. There’s no shame in the love of garlic, and we set the inner garlic free. Luckily none of us are that sociable, even at the best of times. Tonight we made a simple (much simpler than the ingredients will lead you to believe) table of lamb and beef meatballs in a tahini sauce with a tomato and onion salad, humus and pita bread. It was one of my favourite MCC’s ever, only bettered by having a helping of the MCC Harissa we made a while ago. I’ll lay out the recipe for the meatballs here and save the humus and salad for another post… The humus is where most of the garlic went… It was dangerous and most definitely not to all tastes, we on the other hand loved it. Ooohing and ahhhing as we ate it.
These meatballs are delicious. I’ve got to be honest and say that the Tahini sauce is a little weird but once you combine a few meatballs, a little salad and a large dollop of humus inside a pita, it all makes sense. Amazing.
Ingredients
Meatballs
- 35g stale white bread (we luckily had a bag of breadcrumbs available. As you do.)
- 400g minced beef
- 350g lamb
- 7 cloves of garlic
- 35g of flat leaf parsley
- good pinch of salt
- pinch black pepper
- 1 free range egg
- light olive oil for frying
- 1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley to garnish
- grated zest of 1/2 lemon to garnish
- 2 tsp coriander seeds
- 2 tsp cinnamon
The Tahini Sauce
- 150 ml tahini paste
- 150 ml of water
- 70 ml white wine vinegar
- 1 garlic clove crushed
- pinch of salt
Method
First things first, the tahini sauce. Splat your garlic clove with the side of your knife and then finely chop. Sprinkle crunchy salt on top and then make the garlic into a paste by working the salt into it.
Now add the tahini, water, vinegar, garlic and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Get yer whisk out and whisk the mixture until smooth. It should be kind of creamy.
Next up the meatballs themselves… Get the oven running at 200° and while it’s heating up, soak the bread in water for a few minutes. Remove the bread, squeeze out most of the water and add to a large bowl. Now get the rest of your ingredients and add to the bowl and mix well with your hands. It’s more of a fold than a mix as you want the meat to not become too mushy.
Make the mix in to small golf ball sized balls and set aside for shallow frying. Use the light oil and brown the meatballs on a quite high heat. About 2 minutes should do it. Even though they’re not cooked all the way through we couldn’t resist trying one… Once done set aside on kitchen roll to absorb any juices and oil. Arrange the meatballs on a baking tray and put in the oven for 5 minutes, add the tahini sauce evenly over all the meatballs and put back into the oven for another 10 minutes.
That’s it we’re done. Really easy to make, amazingly tasty and with the rest of the meal was greater than the sum of its parts.
So we decided on burgers, big fat ones. Whenever I’ve made burgers in the past they’ve always fallen apart, but now, aha, I have found the secret…
The trick I’ve found with burgers is – do not mix in a bowl. I’m not sure why, but they seem to stay together better, and it’s more fun.
Cook under a hot grill for 7-10 minutes each side (depends if you like it rare or not).
These burgers are great, but I have to say the star of this show were the chips, I’ve never made chips before and these far exceeded my expectations, and the kids. lol.