SOUTZOUKAKIA (CUMIN-SCENTED MEATBALLS WITH TOMATO SAUCE) - p. 103
I was skeptical about this recipe. The meatballs sounded like the might be good, but the sauce? So simple, so little seasoning… and how much sauce can you get out of an 8-oz can of tomato sauce. Sometimes when I see a recipe that I don’t think will work, it actually drives me to make it. It’s like I’m saying, “prove me wrong” to the author.
So this extremely simple sauce consists of an 8-oz can of tomato sauce, some olive oil, an option teaspoon of sugar, 1/2 cup of water, salt, and black pepper. That’s it. No onion, no garlic, no herbs. You just dump the ingredients into a saucepan and simmer. The recipe doesn’t tell you to, but I did keep the pot partially covered during the simmering, because the sauce was not deep and I didn’t want it to evaporate too much.
For the meatballs, you mix ground beef with grated onion, grated garlic, a hefty dose of cumin, salt, and pepper. The recipe calls for 1 lb of ground beef, and I used 12 oz of Impossible, but didn’t really scale down the recipe (I also made a full batch of sauce). You are instructed to shape them into ovals - not sure what this means, quenelles? So I went by the picture where they seemed kind of quenelle-like. They are supposed to be 3" long and you are meant to get 10-12 of them. And yet… the headnote mentions that the author and her spouse like to serve these at Christmas parties on toothpicks. Who eats a 3" meatball on a toothpick? I made mine smaller, and got 10. You pan-fry these, then add to the sauce and simmer. I was a bit worried about this… I had my sauce in a 3-qt saucepan, and it turned out that the meatballs did just barely fit in one layer. But if you used the full amount of meat, I don’t think that would be the case, and the sauce didn’t fill the saucepan to the point that a second layer would be simmering in the sauce. So this ended up working for me, but if you are going to make these, think about how you will navigate combining the sauce and balls for the simmering. I simmered for longer than instructed, and also kept the meatballs warm in the oven for a while.
So the good news here is that the author proved me wrong. These meatballs were delicious. I guess the cumin and onion in the meatballs was sufficient to the point that the sauce didn’t need a lot of seasoning. I think my longer simmer and holding period probably helped in that regard. I would make again. We served this with spanakorizo from p. 177.
