Lebanese lamb tartare

[Deleted]

I haven't tried this recipe yet but I plan to do so very soon.

Ingredients (for 6)

500g minced lamb
100g coarse bulgur
1 red onion
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 bouquet of mint leaves
1 lemon
salt, pepper

Preparation

Peel and chop the onion. Wash and chop the mint leaves. Squeeze the lemon and set the juice aside. Rinse the bulgur several times.

In a large bowl, mix the lamb and bulgur. Add the onion, mint, cinnamon, 2 spoons of oil, the lemon juice, salt & pepper, and mix it all together.

Put the bowl in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Drizzle the rest of the oil over the tartare before serving with Lebanese flat bread (or tortillas? )

The recipe says that this can also be cooked for people who have an aversion to raw meat. To do this, you form the mixture into meatballs and fry them for 5 minutes in olive oil. In this case, it recommends serving them with a cilantro-heavy Lebanese taboulé.

[bixaorellana]

I have a distant memory of seeing a photo of this being prepared, I think in one of the old Time-Life Foods of the World cookbooks. The reason I remember it is because the lamb meat was pounded in a mortar, rather than being ground -- a messy process. Can't remember if the bulgur was also pounded into it. I suppose, much as the sieving of Yucatecan black beans has passed away with the advent of the blender, pounding has given way to grinding.

You can probably get good fresh lamb every day in your neighborhood, Kerouac, can't you?

The cinnamon is an interesting note, which certainly sounds authentic.

[Deleted]

Here is the official photograph that goes with that recipe.

[lagatta]

When I have eaten this dish, the lamb and bulghur were much more mixed together - you couldn't see grains of bulghur as in the photo.

This mixture can also be the outer layers of kibbeh balls, torpedo-shaped fried treats shaped around a core of lamb, spices, pine nuts etc.

[Deleted]

I was thinking myself that people who want to fry these could probably roll them in sesame seeds or some such beforehand.

[lagatta]

When I've had them fried, the outer layer is just bulghur and lamb, but more bulghur than lamb, and the core is lamb with spices, pine nuts, sometimes currant (which I don't like in this) etc.

[Deleted]

I found a nice piece of lamb but no mint tonight , probably because the local mint wholesaler takes Monday off. Tomorrow, mint will not be a problem.

[bixaorellana]

And your camera battery is fully charged?

[Deleted]

Okay, here it is, but I have to admit that I was just a tad disappointed -- I needed more intense flavors, and the lamb hardly tasted like lamb at all. It could have been beef, veal, pork... I really had to wrap my tongue around it to get a hint of lamb taste. If I can find adult mutton next time, I will use that.

I respected the spices of the recipe, but next time I will use more spices (and a greater variety) and probably something to heat it up. This was quite bland, but I did enjoy the mixture of cinnamon and mint.

My presentation became much more international, because I put the lamb on Belgian endive leaves, and I put some hard boiled eggs with Indian mango chutney and Turkish pickled vegetables around it.

I completely forgot to buy some flat bread, so I took some onion roti paratha out of my freezer (imported from Singapore) and fried up a few of them to accompany the dish.

All in all, a very good and unusual dinner.

           

[bixaorellana]

Absolutely beautiful presentation and appetizing array of foods.

Probably some minced hot green pepper would not have gone amiss & even an absolutely non-authentic half-squirt of worcestershire sauce.

[hwinpp]

Maybe it tastes better if you do actually use beef?

[Deleted]

It would have been even more blah with beef. It really did need a bit more spice.