And ANOTHER cool-kitchen supper

Tonight's Menu

• grilled lamb patties
  
• whole-wheat pita
  
• lettuce and tomato
  
• quick pickled onions
• herby yogurt dressing
  

Here's another supper that will keep your kitchen nice and cool, assuming your grill doesn't run out of propane halfway through cooking the lamb like mine did. Oy. (I finished them under the broiler for a couple of minutes, and they were fine. But still.)

I think I've told you that we've been eating a lot of lamb lately, and we've discovered that we really kind of love it. For the patties, I mixed ground lamb with some minced onion and garlic, chopped fresh parsley and cilantro, a bit of olive oil (the ground lamb I buy tends to be VERY lean), salt, pepper, chili powder, and some whole coriander and cumin seeds that were toasted in a dry skillet and then ground to a powder with the mortar and pestle. (Hey, if you've got ground cumin and coriander in your spice cabinet and you can't be bothered to toast and grind whole spices, use what you've got. I'm not here to force anyone to toast and grind spices, though I do think that adds a nice extra layer of flavor.)

The lamb mixture was formed into balls slightly bigger than golfballs and then flattened into patties. Think of them as mini lamb burgers, if you will -- slider sized, rather than burger sized. I grilled them for about 5 minutes per side over medium heat, or I would have if I hadn't run out of propane. Grrr!

The pita was purchased, and the lettuce and tomato was (were?) just leaves of romaine and sliced vine-ripe tomatoes (from the store, because my garden sucks this year AGAIN).

I've made these picked onions before and they are seriously addicting. All I did was whisk together a tablespoon or so of red wine vinegar, maybe a third as much olive oil, and a tiny bit of sugar. Then I tossed in some thinly sliced red onions and just let them sit, stirring/tossing occasionally, while the meat cooked. So good!

For the dressing, all I did was mix some plain Greek-style yogurt with some minced garlic, chopped fresh herbs (mint, cilantro and parsley) and fresh lemon juice.

You can assemble these however you like, but I like to stuff a pita with a couple of lamb patties, some romaine and a couple of slices of tomato, then top it with the pickled onions and drizzle the yogurt dressing on top. This is seriously one of my favorite dinners that I've ever made, people. It beats takeout any day!

Here's the timeline. A LOT of this can be done ahead of time, like even the day before.

• Up to one day ahead, make the yogurt dressing and stick it in the fridge.
• Also up to one day ahead, make the pickled onions (you CAN wait until pretty much the last minute on these, if you don't want to make them ahead).
• And hey, while you're at it, you could totally make the meat mixture ahead of time and form it into patties, refrigerating it on wax-paper-lined cookie sheets until you're ready to grill.
• For that matter, you could wash and portion out the lettuce ahead of time, too! Wow, this timeline is pretty useless, eh?
• Okay, at some point you will need to grill the lamb patties. This will take about 10 minutes total.
• While the lamb is grilling, slice your UNREFRIGERATED tomato. You know not to refrigerate your tomatoes until after they're sliced up or in a mixed salad or something, right? They'll retain a lot more flavor if you keep them out of the fridge as much as possible. So yeah, do this one at the last minute.
• Take the meat off the grill, lay everything out so folks can build their own pita, and serve it up!

I had a craving

Tonight's Menu

• lamb kofta kebabs w/minted yogurt
  
• za'atar bread
  
• marinated red onions and cherry tomatoes
  

We've been eating a lot of lamb lately, owing in part to the fact that the new farmers market that just opened in my neighborhood (yay!) has a vendor that sells local, pastured lamb in a variety of cuts. I like to load the ground lamb with spices and make little meatballs out of it, but tonight I had a craving for lamb on the grill. Kofta kebabs were just the ticket!

Bear with me, because as usual I don't have an actual recipe, but I can tell you what I did. First, I stuck a heel of stale bread into the food processor and whizzed it up until I had fresh bread crumbs. I was afraid dry crumbs would make the meat too crumbly. To the bread crumbs, I added some chopped fresh parsley, kosher salt, garam masala, chili powder, paprika and grated onion (fresh onion, not dried -- just peel it and run it over the large holes of a box grater). I also ran a good-sized garlic clove over my microplane zester (love this tip -- no need to peel the garlic!) and added that as well. I pulsed it for a bit to blend the ingredients, then added a pound of ground lamb and one large egg. Whiz it around until it's all combined, then form the meat into sort of oblong sausagey shapes and thread a metal skewer through each one (or a soaked bamboo skewer). Then grill them over high heat on well-oiled grates for about 4-5 minutes per side or until done through.

The yogurt sauce was easy -- just mix some greek-style yogurt with chopped fresh mint, a tiny bit of lemon juice, and a tiny bit of minced garlic. It makes a nice accompaniment to the meat.

I have made za'atar bread before. We all love this as an alternative to focaccia, and again, it went so nicely with the flavors of the meat.

For the little marinated salad I served alongside, all I did was cut a red onion in half lengthwise and then slice it VERY thinly crosswise, dumping the little onion slivers into a non-reactive bowl. I added halved cherry tomatoes (actually, I think these were grape tomatoes, but it doesn't matter) along with some chopped fresh parsley and oregano. Then I mixed some red wine vinegar with a TINY bit of sugar and a small amount of EVOO (use more vinegar than oil), poured that over the onions and tomatoes, seasoned with a bit of kosher salt, and tossed it all together. I just let this sit on the countertop at room temperature while I made the rest of the meal. It was very refreshing!

This whole meal was freaking fantastic, if I do say so myself! I had such a craving for something Middle Eastern or Mediterranean and this was perfect. The lamb kofta reminded me very much of a Romanian dish called mici, and I am half convinced that my occasional craving for spiced meat on the grill is an ancestral memory of some kind (I am one-eighth Romanian on my Dad's side). Every now and then, I need a little garlic and paprika in my life, you know?

Here's my suggested timeline for this meal. This is not exactly the one I followed, but it's the one I WOULD follow when I made this again.

• Earlier in the day, make the minted yogurt and stick it in the fridge.
• Also earlier in the day, make the meat mixture and put it in the fridge. It's easier to work with when it's cold.
• About an hour before serving time, make the marinated onions and tomatoes and let them sit on the countertop while you do the rest.
• About 40 minutes before serving time, prepare the za'atar bread (it has to rest for 20 minutes while the oven gets hot, then it cooks for 15 minutes or so).
• About 20 minutes before serving time, light the grill and put the meat on skewers while it heats.
• Put the za'atar bread in the oven.
• Put the meat on the grill. Turn after 4-5 minutes.
• Take the meat off the grill and the bread out of the oven.
• Slide the meat off the skewers so no one ends up in the emergency room (I speak from experience with metal skewers, here -- those suckers get HOT).
• Slice the bread into wedges, pull the yogurt out of the fridge, give the salad another toss and serve it all up!

Lamb pita FTW!

Tonight's Menu

• tiny spiced lamb meatballs w/tzatziki
  
• whole-wheat pita
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Hey, so I cooked lamb for the first time ever tonight and it was surprisingly (because as you longtime readers know, I don't have such a great track record with kitchen experimentation) delicious! It almost tasted like I knew what I was doing! Weird!

What I did was take a couple of cloves of garlic and some fresh herbs from my garden (mostly parsley, with a bit of oregano and mint -- my mint is JUST NOW coming back from winter) and whiz them up in a little mini food processor that I always forget I have. It made a sort of paste, which I added to 1.5 pounds of ground lamb, some salt and pepper, dried cumin and coriander, chili powder, garam masala, an egg and some dry bread crumbs. I formed it into teeny tiny meatballs, using about a teaspoon of lamb mixture for each ball, and put them on a foil-lined baking sheet. Then I popped them in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 25 minutes. (Digression -- I ALWAYS bake my meatballs instead of frying them. It's so much easier, and there's less to clean up. Plus they are lower in fat, without the added oil and whatnot. Try it!)

Oh, people. They were so good! Really aromatic without any one spice overpowering another. I only wish I had measured the spices, so I'd know how much to tell you to use if you make this. You'll just have to wing it like I did!

I had never made tzatziki before tonight, either. I know! I love it and could eat it on just about anything, but I've never actually MADE it, and it was so easy! All I did was peel and grate a bit of cucumber (I used the seedless kind, but if you use the regular just scrape out the seeds before grating) onto a paper towel, then wrap it all up and squeeze it over the sink to get most of the water out. Then I dumped the cucumber into a bowl and added a couple of very finely minced garlic cloves, the juice of half a lemon, and a bit of EVOO. I tossed that around with a fork to combine, then stirred in about a cup of Greek-style yogurt (I found this at my local SuperTarget, believe it or not) and a wee bit of salt to taste. I refrigerated it for a few hours to let the flavors meld before serving. It was really good, but I used a WEE bit too much garlic, I think. I'm sort of breathing fire now. At least I don't have to worry about vampire attacks for the next few days. Hee!

The pita was purchased. I've heard it's easy to make and keep meaning to try it, but not tonight!

The salad bar was chopped romaine lettuce, sliced green onions, sliced carrots from the garden, and the last of the cherry tomatoes.

What I did, and no one else really followed my example, was fill my pita with chopped romaine, top that with some meatballs, and drizzle some tzatziki on top. It was pure heaven, people. Thank goodness there were leftovers!