Source: A Middle Eastern Feast by Claudia Roden (contains an affiliate link)
Grilled minced meat on skewers.
"Each country and each area in the Middle East has its favorite flavourings for kofta.
Here is a basic recipe, giving a few simple alternative seasonings.
Use fat meat to keep it moist and juicy. If you find it hard to put the meat on skewers, make it into burgers."
Claudia Roden
“Use fat meat to keep it moist and juicy.”
Ingredients:
1 kg (2 lb) lamb or beef (or a mixture of both), minced
2 onions, grated
Salt and black pepper
Optional seasonings: (1) 1 tsp ground cinnamon; or (2) 1 tsp allspice; or (3) 1 tsp ground cumin and 1 tsp ground coriander.
Serving: TBA
Method:
1. Cut the meat into pieces and turn it to a soft paste in a food processor. Add the remaining ingredients and blend again.
2. Take smallish lumps of the mixture and pat them into sausage shapes around flat and wide metal skewers. If you don't have flat skewers - you can make the koftas into sausage shapes or burgers.
3. Cook under a hot grill or on a charcoal barbecue. If grilling over a barbecue, wait until the charcoal has stopped smoking and glows dull red before you place the skewers over it.
4. Turn the skewers until the koftas are cooked and browned all over, but still a little pink and juicy inside.
Serve nestling in warm Arab bread or pitta to catch the juices, or with plain rice, and accompanied by salad.
Top tips:
A very special version of this kofta is made with a few pine nuts worked into the meat. It is usually shaped in small ovals around the skewer.
In Turkey, they serve kofta kebab on a bed of yoghurt beaten with a sprinkling of salt, pepper, chopped parsley and mint, and topped with chopped tomatoes.
You can also spoon a little of the yoghurt on to the meat and garnish with chopped spring onion.
Serve them on a bed of parsley or chervil, sprinkled with finely chopped onions, as they do in Egypt.
NB: Recipe Treasury is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
The link to the book below includes an affiliate tracking code - we may get paid if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these links. That said, we are genuinely recommending this book as we personally own it and have found it to be of particular use over the years.
Source: A Middle Eastern Feast by Claudia Roden (contains an affiliate link)
Comments