"Spiced Meatballs with Baby Eggplants combines delicious cumin-spiced meatballs with tender, baby eggplants bathed in a gorgeous 'tomato olive oil sauce' and it's so dang goooooood!"
Spiced Meatballs with Baby Eggplants
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Prep time: 30mins
Cook time: 1hr 30mins
Serves or Makes: 10
Recipe Card
ingredients
- 900 gram full fat beef mince
- 4 cloves finely chopped garlic cloves
- 3 finely grated or processed brown onions
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
- 3 teaspoons salt
- 5 teaspoons cumin
- 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 750 milliliter tomato passata
- 2 small purple onions
- extra salt
- 1/2 bunch continental parsley, leaves only
- 10 baby eggplants
Method
Preparing the Spiced Meatballs
Step 1
Combine the mince-meat, garlic, brown onions, eggs, breadcrumbs, salt and cumin well
Step 2
Add half a cup EVOO to a baking pan and heat on medium
Step 3
While the oil is heating up, roll the meatball mixture into balls of approximately 4cm diameter and place them in the pan
Step 4
When the meatballs have browned on one side, turn them over and cook them until they brown a little on the other side; then turn the heat off
Preparing the Spiced Meatballs with Baby Eggplants
Step 1
Pour the passata evenly over the meatballs
Step 2
Peel and cut the purple onions in half; cut each half lenghthwise; and then cut each quarter into 3 equal segments, so onion pieces have a ‘square shape’
Step 3
Separate all the onion layers and lay them across the top of the meatballs
Step 4
Season with salt
Step 5
Scatter continental parsley leaves across the top of the baking pan
Step 6
Cut the tops of the eggplants and discard them; slice the eggplants in half, lengthwise
Step 7
Arrange them across the top of the baking pan, cut side facing downwards
Step 8
Season with more salt
Step 9
Pour the remaining olive oil across the top of the eggplants
Step 10
Cover the pan with aluminium foil, ensuring there are vents from which the steam can be released
Step 11
Bake in a oven pre-heated to 200°C fan-forced for 50 minutes
Step 12
Remove the foil and gently embed all of the eggplants into the ‘tomato olive oil sauce’
Step 13
Bake for a further 20 minutes uncovered
Serving the Spiced Meatballs with Baby Eggplants
Step 1
Serve the ‘Spiced Meatballs with Baby Eggplants’ with KO’s Risoni-Rice, Greek yoghurt and crusty bread to sop up all the oily-tomato sauce
Key Points
Step 1
When processing the onions, do not ‘over-process’ them, as they will start to release their fluids and become wet and mushy. You want the onions to be chopped finely, but remain dry
Step 2
When browning the meatballs, brown them well on one side and then brown them less on the other side (the side that faces downwards when all the other ingredients are added). During the baking phase, the bottom of the meatballs will brown further (so, if you overcook them on the cooktop, you risk burning them during the baking phase)
Step 3
The baby eggplants can be replaced with regular eggplants cut into thick slices (1.5cm thickness)
Step 4
The more oil you add to this dish, the more delicious it becomes. When we had this dish at Diporto, it was drowning (in the nicest possible way) in oil infused with all the flavours of the dish and we absolutely loved sopping it all up with crusty bread. Here I have suggested that 1 cup of EVOO is a good starting point for this dish. You could easily increase that to 1 ½ - 2 cups if you want
Step 5
Recipe can be halved, but you may need to add a little extra passata – 400-450ml