Moroccan Meatballs with spinach and a fresh tomato sauce

Serves 4

This can be used with prawns, chicken thighs, strips of beef, fish fillets. For a vegetarian dish use chickpeas, pumpkin, zucchini and spinach etc…

Ingredients

500g lamb mince, you can use any mince, this recipe would make enough sauce for 750g mince if you wanted.

1 brown onion, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

6 truss tomatoes, roughly chopped, make sure they are nice fat red ones

1 bunch of English spinach, destalked, washed, drained and roughly chopped, or you can use kale or baby spinach leaves.

1 tsp herbamare or salt and pepper

1 portion of Moroccan spice mix

Optional garnish: Greek yoghurt to swirl over and fresh mint leaves.

Moroccan spice mix for 500-750g meat

This can be doubled or tripled and stored in an airtight container for future use.

3 tsp paprika, you can use hot paprika

2 tsp each of ground cumin, cinnamon and ginger

1 tsp each of ground coriander and turmeric

A pinch of saffron threads

1 -2 tsp chilli flakes (optional)

Mix altogether.

Method

Mix mince with a herbamare or season well with salt and pepper. Knead for 1 minute until it is a little bit sticky, and then roll into golf sized meatballs.

In a large pan heat a little ghee/coconut oil and cook the meatballs, onion and garlic on a medium heat for 5 mins until nice and brown, then add the spices and stir for 30 seconds until the meatballs are coated. Then add your tomatoes and stir and simmer for another 5 minutes until the meatballs are cooked and the tomatoes have broken down and have released their juices. Stir occasionally. Then add your spinach and wilt down, mixing the meatballs and sauce over the spinach to cover the spinach, this should take 2 minutes to wilt down. Serve with a swirl of yoghurt and fresh mint leaves.