Jonas.

My husband has started his 2 week paternity leave today.  Since the baby is not here yet, he's here helping me out and keeping me company while she arrives.

It is so much better to go through this wait with someone, especially when it's your favorite person in the whole world!

He made me an amazing dinner today, "Oriental Meatballs in Tomato Sauce".  There are no words to explain how delicious they were!  We got the recipe from an old book we found in Costa Rica with Oriental recipes, so it has a bit of everything.  I think this one might be from somewhere around Morocco.

Ingredients for the sauce (4 people): 2 cans of crushed tomatoes, 2 small onions, 2 garlic cloves, 3 tbs. olive oil, 1tbs "ras-el-hanout",  1tbs tomato paste, fresh thyme and parsley freshly chopped, salt to taste.  For the meat balls: 2 small loafs of dry bread, milk, 1 small onion, 500g ground meat (better if it's veal, but we used normal beef, and I think lamb would be great too), 1 egg, salt and pepper to taste, butter to fry.


Instructions:

• Sauce: Fry chopped garlic and onions in medium heat for 5 minutes or until christalized, add ras-el-hanout and tomato paste and let stay for 2-3 more minutes, add crushed tomatoes and slow cook for 30 minutes mixing every so often until the sauce thikens. Add fresh herbs and salt to taste.
• Meatballs: soak bread loafs in milk. Fry chopped onion in a bit of butter until christalized.  In a separate bowl, add the minced meat, squeeze and mix the already milk soaked bread with the meat and add the fried onion, egg and parsley.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Make small balls with the meat mix and fry them for a couple of minutes in a bit of butter.  Once they are golden, add them to the tomato sauce for about 5 minutes.  
• Serve with bread or rice.  You can also add sour cream or Greek yogurt on top!
• Enjoy!