Moroccan Lamb Meatball and Basmati Bake

Here's another of my recipe cards from Waitrose, for some reason I forgot to blog it at the time. This one was a quickie cheater thing, with most ingredients sort of ready. However, I wasn't able to get hold of some of them, so had to go from scratch.

Ingredients
500 g lamb mince
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp dried mint
1 dl breadcrumbs
300 g basmati rice
400 g can of tomatoes
500 ml beef stock
1 tbsp harissa paste
1 cinnamon stick (5 cm)

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 °C.
2. Mix together the mince with the black pepper, ginger, coriander, mint and breadcrumbs.
3. Place the rice in a casserole dish.
4. Crush or blend the tomatoes, then stir together with the stock and harissa paste. Break the cinnamon stick in two and stir in as well, then pour over the rice.
5. Form small meatballs from the mince mixture, it should make 20 - 24, then place on top of the rice in the casserole.
6. Cover the casserole and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the cover and let cook for a further 15 - 20 minutes to brown the meatballs.
7. The rice should be cooked through and the liquid should have mostly been absorbed. It's ready to serve.

On the whole this was rather nice, but a bit on the cinnamon-y side. Also the harissa I bought wasn't as spicy/hot as I would like it to be - I recommend tasting it first and adjusting the amount. Also possibly a little more salt might be a good idea.