Algerian Kefta (Meatballs)

Ingredients

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• 1 lb lentil-walnut crumble
• 4 clove Garlic
• ½ cup Onion
• To taste Salt
• To taste Pepper
• 3 Plum Tomatoes
• 1 tsp Parsley
• ½ cup Water

Method

1. Prep: cook lentils, pulse with walnuts.
2. Combine lentil-walnut crumble with 1/2 of the minced garlic and 1 tablespoon chopped onion in a large bowl.
3. Mix with your hands until fully incorporated.
4. Shape meat mixture into 1 1/2-inch oblong patties; you should have 12 to 14 meatballs.
5. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.
6. Brown patties in batches in the hot skillet until crispy on both sides and no longer pink in the center, about 10 minutes.
7. Set meatballs aside in a rimmed serving dish.
8. Reduce heat to medium and stir remaining chopped onion into drippings in the skillet.
9. Season with salt and pepper.
10. Cook, stirring constantly, until onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes.
11. Stir in remaining garlic and cook for 30 seconds.
12. Stir in Roma tomatoes, dried parsley, and ras el hanout. Pour in water.
13. Cook until tomatoes are soft, about 5 minutes.
14. Pour tomato sauce over meatballs to serve.

About the ingredients

Garlic Allium sativum

Garlic itself is canonical, but extract denotes a concentrated/isolated derivative outside the whole-food canon. Marketed as natural/healthy supplement, hence mistaken-as-WFPB flag.

Onion Allium cepa

Bulb vegetable, eaten raw or cooked. Whole minimally-processed plant food; 'organic' refers to cultivation only. WFPB-canonical.

Salt NaCl

Crystalline sodium chloride, harvested by evaporating seawater or mining rock-salt deposits. Used as seasoning and preservative since antiquity—central to trade and food economies for millennia. A mineral, not a plant food, and a sodium isolate; noncanonical to WFPB.

Pepper Piper nigrum

Dried unripe fruit (peppercorns) of the pepper vine, used whole or ground. A whole dried spice with nothing added or extracted. Canonical WFPB aromatic.

Plum Tomatoes Solanum lycopersicum

Whole fruit of the tomato plant (botanically a berry, culinary vegetable). 'Organic' denotes a farming method, not a distinct ingredient. Raw whole fruit, rich in lycopene, vitamin C, potassium. WFPB-canonical.

Parsley Petroselinum crispum

Fresh leafy herb in the carrot family; flat-leaf (Italian) and curly types. Eaten raw or added late as garnish/aromatic. Whole leaf and stem, no processing. Rich in vitamin K, C, A, folate. Whole plant — fully WFPB canonical.

Water

Plain potable water (H2O). Universal solvent and culinary base, no calories or nutrients beyond trace minerals. Not derived from any organism; an unprocessed essential. WFPB canonical.