Name: Chicken Meatballs With Molokhieh, Garlic, and Cilantro From Falastin: A Cookbook
Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients: 1¾ oz/50g crustless sourdough bread, finely blitzed into crumbs, or 1 large zucchini (½ lb/220g), coarsely grated; 1 lb 2 oz/500g ground chicken or turkey thighs; 2 garlic cloves, crushed; 1½ tsp ground cumin; 1 tsp ground cinnamon; ½ tsp ground allspice; ¼ tsp chile flakes; ½ cup/10g cilantro leaves, roughly chopped; ½ cup/10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped; ½ cup/10g mint leaves, roughly chopped; 1 lemon: grate finely to get 1½ tsp zest, then cut into wedges; Salt and black pepper; 2 tbsp olive oil; 2 garlic cloves, crushed; 1 lemon: shave the rind to get 4 strips, then juice to get 1½ tbsp; 1¾ cups/450ml chicken stock; 1¾ lb/800g frozen molokhieh (or 1¾ lb/800g frozen chopped spinach plus 7 oz/200g okra, thinly sliced—see note below); ½ tsp ground cinnamon; Salt and black pepper; ½ cup/10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped; 1 cup/20g cilantro leaves, roughly chopped; ¼ cup olive oil; 6 garlic cloves, crushed; ½ tsp chile flakes; ½ cup cilantro, roughly chopped

Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Micah Marie Morton

This is somewhere between a stew and a soup. A “stoup,” maybe. Comforting and hearty, certainly, served with some rice or crusty white bread.

Playing around: If you want to make this dish gluten-free, replace the breadcrumbs in the meatballs with an equal weight of grated zucchini. The resulting meatballs aren’t quite as firm as those made with bread, but this, arguably, makes them even more comforting.

Getting ahead: The meatballs can be made up to a day in advance and kept in the fridge, ready to fry. The molokhieh can also be made a day or two in advance. You can make up the whole thing well before serving; it keeps in the fridge for two days.

Note

Molokhieh, also known as jute leaves or jute mallow, is a dark green leaf, a bit like spinach. The leaves are used widely throughout the Levantine region, added to soups and stews or cooked along with meat. It tastes rather bitter before it gets cooked. A bit like okra, it has a slightly gelatinous consistency that, when blitzed, thickens things up. The molokhieh plant is available fresh in the summer, and dried or frozen for the rest of the year. Outside Palestine, bags of frozen molokhieh are available in Middle Eastern supermarkets. If you can’t find any, an approximation can be made by cooking together spinach and thinly sliced okra. The result, when blitzed together, is not the exact flavor of molokhieh but will get you somewhere close in terms of texture.

Recipe notes

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