Meatballs in tomato sauce

In March, I gave a recipe (from Valentina Harris) for meat loaf, and I used it again to make meatballs. Checking that recipe now, I find that the meatballs I made yesterday were similar, though with a handful of chopped parsley substituting for the cinnamon.

I am never quite sure whether to add a beaten egg to a mixture of this kind, to bind it. I left it out yesterday, and the balls -- which I had rolled between my palms into shapes of about half to two-thirds the size of golfballs -- still managed to cohere.

The main variation in this meal was the sauce. Someone whom I shall not name had bought Dutch cherry tomatoes from the supermarket. Unappetising as salad ingredients, they might make a reasonable sauce with plenty of onion and garlic, I thought.

2 onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
I punnet cherry tomatoes, chopped
Salt

Soften the onions and garlic in the olive oil for about 15 minutes. Tip in the tomatoes, with a grinding of salt, and simmer until they have broken down. Pass the contents of the pan through a vegetable mill. The pre-milled sauce may have been thick, but it will be runny now. Simmer it gently to reduce it.

Meanwhile, heat a thin layer of sunflower or groundnut oil -- olive oil might burn -- over a medium heat in a large (28 cm) frying pan, and brown the meatballs, which should fit into a single layer. Leave them undisturbed for a couple of minutes to brown on one side before turning them over.

Transfer the meatballs, minus the oil, to the simmering tomato sauce, and allow to cook uncovered for 20 to 30 minutes. They should be sitting in a thick coating of sauce, rather than in a pool of it.

Three of us ate these meatballs (made with 200 g each of pork and beef mince), which I served warm, with an unconventional accompaniment of Jersey potatoes in mayonnaise.