Pan Fried Beef, Onion and Parsley Patties, with Agristada Sauce

I’ve posted the recipe for Agristada – a Sephardic lemony sauce – a few years ago. In that post, the sauce was served with fried fish. However, the sauce is traditionally also served with steamed vegetables (such as artichokes or leeks), or with meatballs. When I made the following pan fried meat patties, I’ve decided to serve this tasty sauce with them.

Herbed Meatballs and Stuffed Onions with Cherries

Meatballs cooked with cherries, are known in the Persian, Bukharin and Georgian cuisines. Stuffed onions are also known in these cuisines, and in the Turkish and Greek ones as well. In the following dish, I took the liberty of combining all the above into a free-style version, while using different seasoning and mixing the two dishes in the same pot.

“Porcupine” Meatballs with Eggplants and Tomatoes

Adding rice to meatballs is an old tradition, which can be found in many cuisines around the world. The “porcupine” version is also known in quite a few of them, especially in the Persian and Chinese cuisines.
However, in many of these versions the whimsical “porcupine” effect, i.e. the rice grains protruding noticeably, is not always as pronounced as you can see here.