I have to give credit where it's due. I had help with this one. I'm a little ashamed to say where it came from though. Ok...I was bored and channel surfing when I came across Melissa d'Arabian making "North African" meatballs in this tomato based sauce, and it looked pretty tasty. I've never watched her show because the terrible title, Ten Dollar Dinners, really puts me off. That particular episode was interesting though, so of course I had to give it a shot. With my excellent instruction-following skills, I pretty much used her recipe as a guide. Besides the general no measurement of everything, I made the following adjustments.
Sauce:
More onion and garlic
Red wine, not white
Turbinado sugar instead of brown
Waaaaaay more cinnamon. That was an accident, but I have no patience for measuring so I just dumped lots of red pepper and cinnamon in. That was before I saw it was supposed to be a pinch. Oops.
Cumin
Bay leaf
Meatballs:
Lamb instead of beef
No tomato paste
No cinnamon (too much in the sauce)
I topped the whole dish with pistachios and I have to say, it was pretty awesomely delicious. The sauce wasn't too heavy on the cinnamon at all and the lamb meatballs were really tasty. I want to try this again with fresh tomatoes and more olives. Oh, just a note, this was definitely over $10 bucks to make. I don't know what food prices this lady is using.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/north-african-meatballs-recipe/index.html
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