Supersize Me! Lamb, date and feta meatballs

An Italian-American classic with a Turkish twist.

Welcome back to Supersize Me! This week, spaghetti and meatballs go on holiday to Istanbul.

This mashup of the Italian-American classic and Turkish manti or ‘cheat’s manti’ (kiymali makarna) is so fun and has everything I want in a dish. There’s creamy yet acidic garlic yoghurt topped with steaming twirls of spaghetti; there’s a simple but crucial tomato sauce; there are meatballs made with lamb, tangy cheese and sweet nubbins of date; and finally, there are sharp sumac onions to cut the glossy, spiced butter.

And, while there are a few elements, all are EASY and the sum of the parts = 10/10.

Of course, you could serve these meatballs any way you like; perhaps on flatbreads instead of with spaghetti or as a riff on a classic meatball sub. Personally, I find spinning the tines of my fork through shimmering spag an important act of self-love, which we could all use some of right now at the scrag end of Jan.