Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Sometimes my Mum would serve a can of meatballs for tea along with mashed potato. When I was first married, I cooked Mary Berry's frikadeller recipe from Home&Freezer Digest, using a mix of pork and beef. IKEA arrived in the 80s and I was hooked on their Swedish meatballs. Now they sell meatballs, chicken balls, veggie balls and plant based balls. A useful freezer standby - I posted about how to serve your 'Swedish' meatballs in a variety of different ways back in 2015
Recently I rustled up some home made meatballs - this time with a middle eastern twist, using my Ottolenghi Simple Cookbook which Julian gave me for my birthday last year.

I had some leftover lamb and I flicked through this book and found this. It was very easy and very tasty. I had enough lamb to make enough for four portions - so we ate half and put the rest away for later in the week. 

500g minced lamb
100g feta, crumbled into roughly 1cm pieces
2 tbsp picked thyme leaves
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
10g parsley leaves, finely chopped
1 slice white bread, blitzed
½ tsp ground cinnamon
Salt and black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp pomegranate molasses, plus 1 tbsp extra to serve (optional)

Heat the oven to 200C. Put all the ingredients apart from the oil and pomegranate molasses in a large bowl, add three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and plenty of pepper, and mix with your hands to combine. Still using your hands, divide the meatball mix into 18 roughly 35g portions and form each into 4cm-wide balls. Heat the oil in a large frying pan on a medium-high flame, then fry the meatballs (cook them in batches, if need be), for five to six minutes in total, gently turning them throughout, until golden brown all over. Transfer the meatballs to an oven tray lined with baking paper, drizzle pomegranate molasses over the top, if using, and bake for five minutes, to cook through. Serve hot, with a final tablespoon of pomegranate molasses spooned on top. [I baked mine in the air fryer]

I forgot to take a picture of mine - but they did look exactly like Yotam's, and we liked the flavour. It was the end of my bottle of pomegranate molasses, I shall have to get some more at Oli's when I am next in London with Liz. It does give a lovely sweet-sharp flavour. I served the meatballs with plain boiled rice, and a quick salad made with grated carrot. 

This is such a fun children's book. We have had hot weather, cool weather, dry weather, rain, thunder and lightning in the past fortnight. But no meatballs!

How do you eat yours?