Meat balls in tomato sauce

A favourite recipe in our household... stemming from Claudia Roden's book of Jewish food.

Serves 4

500 g minced beef
1 small onion or shallot, minced
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 garlic cloves, cut finely
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tsp sugar
500 g tomato passata

Fry garlic in sunflower oil, then add tomatoes and sugar. Season with pepper and salt. Bring the sauce to the boil, then let it simmer.
Meanwhile prepare the meat balls: mix beef, onion, cinnamon and salt. Form small balls, the size of a big walnut.
Add the meat balls to the sauce, bring to the boil, then lower the heat and let the meat balls simmer for 15-20 min until cooked.

Notes

You can leave out the onion.
I used to add a small pepper (peperoncino) to the sauce to spice things up, but I'm leaving this out now for the sake of the little ones in our household.