Lamb Meatballs with Broad Beans, Herbs & Lemon

A lamb recipe swiftly followed by another if only to prove myself a liar.. In the last post I mentioned that I couldn’t get hold of any broad beans anywhere near me - well, only the next day, on the way back from lunch at Mum’s we made a slight detour to the Waitrose in the City and hurrah! There they were. Big smiles. I should point out that I tend to have a 4-6 week lag between cooking things and blogging them so at the time they were of course in season.

This recipe is one of the reasons I had been on the hunt for them (just to be clear however, out of season feel free to use frozen). One from Ottolenghi featured in his recipe book “Jerusalem” I had seen it mentioned on a few forums & posted comments on blogs but the only link was to an expired copyright page (and therefore non-existent) on the Food section of the Guardian online*.

I’m nothing if not an expert googler (in my world) so did eventually find a few other blogs that had cooked it themselves and had kindly provided the recipe (here and here are two of them).

Minor changes: the original recipe had ⅓ lamb to ⅔ beef - I love the depth of flavour and sweetness to lamb mince and this sort of ratio is kind of inconvenient so I just used lamb. On this occasion I was unable to get hold of dill so I left this out but very slightly increased the quantity of the parsley, mint & coriander.

This was utterly delicious: richly flavoured succulent meatballs in a lovely fresh & fragrant lemony herby broth. With of course one of my favourite vegetables: a definite keeper.

* Edit - as it turns out the recipe on the Guardian website is now, weirdly back up and can be seen here (maybe I imagined it had been removed...)


Lamb Meatballs with Broad Beans, Herbs & Lemon

serves 2

2 ¼ tbsp olive oil175g fresh broad beans 
2 sprigs thyme 
3 garlic cloves, sliced
4 spring onions cut on the diagonal into 2cm pieces
2 tbsp lemon juice
250ml of chicken stock
Salt & black pepper
For the meatballs
225g minced lamb
½ red onion, finely chopped
60g fresh breadcrumbs (or those handy ready made ones from Waitrose!)
1 ⅓ tbsp (i.e 1 tbsp + 1 tsp) flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 ⅓ tbsp mint, chopped
1 ⅓ tbsp coriander, chopped
½ tbsp of each of the herbs to finish 
1 large garlic clove, crushed
½ tbsp baharat spice mix 
½ tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp chopped capers 
1 egg, beaten (but only use half)

Place all the meatballs ingredients into a large bowl with about ½ tsp sea salt flakes and a hefty grind of black pepper and mix well with your hands.

Shape into pingpong sized meatballs - you should get somewhere between 10 and 14.

Sear the meatballs in a ½ tbsp of olive oil in a sauté pan (for which you will need a lid) over a medium heat until browned.

Remove from pan, set aside and wipe the pan clean with a paper towel.

Meanwhile blanch the broad beans in boiling salted water for 2 minutes then run under cold water.

Remove the skins from about half the beans, discarding the skins and setting the skinned beans aside.

Heat the remaining oil in the sauté pan used previously and add the thyme, garlic and spring onions. Cook over a low-medium heat for about 3 minutes.

Add the unshelled broad beans, 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 100ml or so of stock (the beans need to be almost covered), a pinch of salt and again, plenty of black pepper. Cover the pan and cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes.

Now return the meatballs to the pan and add the remaining stock, cover and continue to simmer for about 25 minutes.

Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary. Add the extra reserved herbs, remaining lemon juice and the shelled beans.

Stir everything together well, but gently and serve immediately.

This can be served with rice but we had it with some nice bread.