Lamb & Kebbeh!

Of course the food is great here...one doesn't even have to ask that. This is one of my favorite finds...simple and so good...ground lamb and eggs...wow...( I need to find the names for these...Haitham...any help?)

As some of you may know, I grew up with Lebanese food, or at least a version of it that had been adapted after 100 years of living in the states. I grew up eating kebbeh nayeh. Think "beef tartar" with grains of wheat...smashed with a fork, smothered in olive oil and salted and peppered...(and yes, they do that here too dad!) I was eating that stuff before I had teeth and my mom has mentioned that she isn't sure she would do it again knowing all the issues with the meat industry in the states. But, I survived and hadn't eaten it in a long time - it was heavy...But here the kebbeh is made from goat or lamb...and its light...really good...You can see a bit of it in the first kebbeh photo..the reddish ball on the side of the dish.

The images above are examples of kebbeh that has been baked, fried or stuffed. The top is a patty and the bottom one rolled and stuffed (again, not sure of names, any help would be great). The book "Rural Taste of Lebanon" by Yazbeck has a section on kebbeh and gives the following recipe found in northern Lebanon... kebbeh zghortawiye: made of lamb or goat, mixed with burghal. The meat is shaped in big balls and stuffed with animal fat, pine nuts and chopped onions. And another one that is like a casserole, spread in a dish with saute onions and pine nuts and oven baked.

And there is so much more...of course there is kebabs of all types...rolled and pinched on skewer sticks...you get choices of meat mixed with nuts, pomegranate, etc...