Spiced meatballs with broadbeans, roasted carrots and lemon-chili yogurt

This is loosely based on a recipe from the Jerusalem cookbook, although I skipped a lot of the suggested ingredients and adapted it to my own liking. And, I'm afraid, I didn't measure the spices. Just add a LITTLE bit. The cookbook called for a mix called baharat that I can't find here, so I used most of the spices included instead. Just a little will do.

 I love that cookbook though, by the oh-so-talented Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I highly recommend it.  And I highly recommend this dinner. We'll be making it again, even though the kids wrinkled their noses and proceeded to eat rice and soy sauce. (Well, Titus had one meatball, and I think he rather liked it, too.)

Spiced meatballs with Broad Beans

for the meatballs:
500 g ground beef
1 egg
100 g breadcrumbs
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp fresh coriander, minced
salt
black pepper
cumin
coriander
cardamom
cinnamon
allspice
nutmeg
cloves

for the broad beans
6 garlic cloves, sliced
6 spring onions, sliced into 2 cm pieces
250 g broad beans, blanched and shelled (or bought ready-shelled, frozen - that's what I did)
500 ml chicken stock
Juice of one lemon
salt, black pepper

Mix everything together, and roll into walnut-sized meatballs. Fry in batches, in plenty of olive oil until browned on each side, for a few minutes. They don't need to cook through. Set aside. Clean the pan.

In the same pan, now that it's clean, heat some more olive oil. Fry the garlic and spring onions for a few minutes. Add the broad beans, and about 100 ml of chicken stock, and most of the lemon juice but not all of it. Add salt and pepper and let it cook for a few minutes. Then place all of the meatballs back in the pan, add the rest of the stock, cover with a lid and let this cook for about 10-15 minutes. If it feels too runny, remove the lid and let some of the juices reduce. When ready to serve, season with the rest of the lemon juice, and perhaps a little bit more salt or pepper.

Roasted carrots
4 carrots
olive oil

Cut the carrots into batons - I usually cut them into about 10-cm lengths, and halve or quarter those, depending on thickness. Drizzle with plenty of oil and roast in a 225°C oven (lower if you have a convection oven - mine broke!) for about 25 minutes. Make sure they don't burn but do let them roast properly.

Lemon Chili Yogurt
1 tbsp fresh coriander, finely chopped
zest from 1 lemon
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp sambal oelek or similar chili paste
3 tbsp thick yogurt, Greek or Turkish
1-2 tbsp wate

Stir together everything but the water. Add that gradually, stirring to get the thickness you want.

Serve everything with rice, or bread if you prefer. We also added crumbled feta cheese on top.