Bosnian Lamb Meatballs with Caraway Yogurt

 

 
Think of the above photo as a serving suggestion, sort of a "Do as I say not as I did."  If you serve them appropriately your results will be much better then mine. I made these meatballs for dinner the other night and while they were cooking Sebastian came into the kitchen to ask the inevitable, "What's for dinner?"  When I told him we were having Bosnian lamb meatballs with a caraway yogurt sauce he was happy.  I had never served them before but at almost 10 years old he is starting to be a little foodie, excited by many of the things he has the opportunity to eat.

After the initial questioning he came back in several times and happily sniffed the air.  The scent of the lamb roasting with fresh rosemary, thyme and mace was delicious on its own even before I added the caraway and yogurt sauce.  If only I had taken a moment to plate it attractively, before bringing it to the table, allowing it to look as good as it smelled.  Instead I plunked it on the table straight from the oven surrounded by the extra yogurt sauce.  Julian took one look and refused to have any, choosing to have a vegetarian dinner.  I could tell Sebastian's initial reaction was not to have any either, but the smell and his anticipation was too much for him.  He carefully selected the balls with the least amount of yogurt showing and ate them somewhat tentatively.  Next time I will be more careful with presentation, they were good enough to make again.

When preparing this dish in your own kitchen, instead of serving this...

I suggest you bring this to the table

Bosnian Lamb Meatballs with Caraway Yogurt Sauce

Adapted from Half a Can of Tomato Paste and Other Culinary Dilemmas

Meatballs:

1 lb ground lamb (you can sub beef)

1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour

2 Tbsp minced dried onions

3 eggs

1/2 tsp kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1/4 tsp minced fresh rosemary or pinch of dried

1/4 tsp minced fresh thyme or pinch of dried

1/4 tsp ground mace

Yogurt sauce:

1 Tbsp caraway seeds

1 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cup milk, buttermilk or sour cream

2 Tbsp minced fresh mint or parsley (optional because I did not have any)

Preheat the oven to 375°

Mix together the lamb meatball ingredients.  Butter and flour a square baking pan, 9 x 9 x 2 inch and place the balls in the pan in one layer.  I found the mixture was very wet and hard to form into neat balls, I just used a small measured ice cream scoop and let them be a bit more free form.  Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until the balls are cooked though.

Grind the caraway seeds in a spice grinder or pulverize in a mortar and pestle before combining with the other sauce ingredients.  Let stand at room temperature while the meat balls finish cooking.

Remove the meatballs from the oven and lower the oven temperature to 325°.  Allow the meatballs to rest for 10 minutes while the oven temperature goes down.  After 10 minutes pour the sauce over the meatballs and stir to coat them in sauce and mix in the pan drippings.  Return the pan to the oven and cook uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes to allow the sauce to warm and reduce.  To serve remove the cooked meatballs from the baking dish and place on a bed of kale or other green.

Armenian Lamb Sausage Pasta

This is my favorite pasta sauce, more nuanced and flavorful then any I have had at a restaurant.  The lamb flavor is rich and mellow while the cumin adds depth and earthiness without reading as cumin.  If you added cumin directly to pasta sauce it would be more aggressive, less muted.  Because the sausage ingredients are cooked twice, once in the sausage and again in the sauce, they mellow and become more complex.

The sausage and pasta are like the countless articles encouraging us to streamline meal prep by roasting a chicken and making a different entree with the leftovers.  However making the sausage, which has no casing to wrestle with, is easier and faster then roasting a chicken.  So please do not dismiss this pasta dish as too much work; the initial step of making the sausage is not a waste of time on a night you need to make dinner, it is dinner.

The sausages are another favorite meal here, even though they are impossible to photograph attractively.  They are easy to make, take ingredients I always have on hand and taste more complex then their short ingredient list would suggest.  It also doesn't hurt that they make everyone in my family happy.  I often make dishes that I know my children won't eat, I just make sure that there is at least one other dish that they like, that I feel comfortable with them making a meal of. However I sometimes want a cheering section when serving dinner, I want to feel like the kitchen hero. These hand rolled sausages always make me a hero, with children and adults.

This dish is also responsible for an epiphany that has opened many meals to me that my children previously refused to eat, and yes whined about. I realized that I could make dishes like meatballs and meatloaf if I made 2 small changes. Now when I make these dishes I make them sausage shaped. Then I just call them sausages. The usual response from my sausage worshipping children is, "These are good mama, but your lamb sausages are better. The lamb sausage is my favorite."

Armenian Hand Rolled Sausage
Adapted from The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors

Most of the adaptations I have made to this recipe is to make it more pantry friendly.  For example the original recipe calls for evaporated milk, which I did use the first time I mad them (it is amazing what random ingredients are often lurking in my pantry).   There is no discernible difference in flavor when using regular milk and limiting the number of tomato products.  I also upped the cumin, a favorite spice in my house.

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground lamb
1/2 cup pureed crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce (note: tomato sauce does not mean pasta sauce)
1 cup bread crumbs (I always make my own, often from the ends of bread lying around. Just whirl them in the food processor)
1/4 cup milk
2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro or parsley (optional, if I don't have it on hand I just omit this ingredient)
1 Tbsp minced dried onion (do not omit)
1 tsp kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste (at least 1/2 tsp or more to taste)

Mix all the ingredients together.  I find it is best to mix with your hands, squeezing and mixing until really well combined.  Roll meat into balls that are slightly smaller then a tennis ball.  Form into sausage shapes that are about 4 inches by 1 inch long.  It is helpful to wet hands with water while shaping.

Sausages can be grilled or roasted.  If roasting place formed sausages in a shallow baking pan (I use a pyrex lasagna pan) and preheat the oven to 400°  Bake for 20 minutes and transfer to a clean platter to serve.  To grill preheat the grill to high and grill over direct heat until browned and cooked to your taste.

Armenian Lamb Sausage Pasta
Inspired by the leftovers in my fridge with the technique updated by Bon Appetit's  pasta pomodoro

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion finely chopped
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1/8 tsp hot red pepper flakes (optional)
1 qt crushed tomatoes or 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
tomato sauce leftover from making the sausage
1/2 tsp kosher salt or to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 lb whole wheat pasta (or in my case the quantity of pasta that will be eaten by people who want sauce on theirs)
2 Tbsp butter at room temperature (optional)
1/4 cup grated pecorino romano, grana padano or parmesan (I have only tested it with pecorino romano)

Heat olive oil in a 12" or larger skillet over medium low.  Add the onion and cook, stirring often until soft.  Mine took about 5 minutes but Bon Appetit says 12 minutes, so my heat must have been higher.  Add the chopped garlic and cook for about 2 minutes, until the garlic is fragrant but not toasted or burnt, stirring the whole time.

Add the red pepper flakes and after 1 minute add the 2 types of tomatoes and the sausage.  Squish the sausage with a potato masher into small pieces and add the kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.  Cook the sauce, stirring occasionally over medium heat.  It will be properly thickened after about 20 minutes total cooking time, but some of that can happen while the pasta is cooking.

While sauce is thickening bring a large pot of water to the boil and generously salt it before adding the pasta.  Reserve 1 cup of the pasta cooking water and pasta 2 minutes before it will be done to your taste. Add 1/2 cup of the pasta water to the sauce and bring it to the boil over hight heat.  Add the drained pasta and cook while stirring the pasta and sauce until the pasta is al dente.  Add more reserved pasta water if the sauce is not thin enough.

Remove from the heat and add the butter, stirring until it is all melted.  Add the cheese and stir until the cheese melts and serve.  If anyone wishes for more cheese pass it grudgingly while mumbling about the dish being prefect and now they are going to add more cheese.

Lamb Stew with Mint and Rhubarb

I have to confess that the first time I made this dish I was very doubtful. Normally when I decide to make a new dish I can imagine how the flavors would be together in my head, if they would work well together, play off each other etc. Somehow I could not do that for this dish, I think I tried it as a form of rubber necking. I needed to make it so I could see what it tasted like, if it would work.

I realize now that the reason I could not imagine the taste is I had only ever tried rhubarb either sweetened or raw from the garden. When you sweeten rhubarb you mask some of its flavor, which I think for many people is the intent. Conversely rhubarb eaten uncooked from the garden has an astringent quality to me. Raw it is not only the tartness that you can taste, for me it is almost bitter. This is not true for everyone, I have a friend who loves to eat it straight from her yard, or with a little salt.

Well I discovered that when you cook rhubarb it mellows it a little, making it a little sour but in a complex way, very much like some of my favorite middle eastern braises that use lemon and artichokes. In this recipe the lamb is braised until tender and then the rhubarb is added at the end and cooked just long enough to become tender and mellow its bite. The rhubarb in the finished dish is silky, a little sour but balanced by the other flavors. The overall stew is rich and wonderful. Now that I have discovered this dish I want to find other truly savory uses for rhubarb, ones with no added sugar. I am trying to figure out other preparations that would have the strength to stand up to the full flavor of the unsweetened rhubarb. While I struggle with that I may just make this one again.

Lamb Stew with Mint and Rhubarb

3 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 shallots chopped

1 scallion white and all but darkest green portions chopped (or sub another type of onion for the shallot and scallion)

1 clove garlic minced (cut in half first and remove sprout if there is any)

1 1/2 lbs leg of lamb trimmed of all fat and cut in to 1 inch cubes

1 tsp ground coriander seed

3/4 tsp Vermont Baharat (optional, but if you decide to make some it is great on grilled meats as well)

3 cups water

1/4 cup fresh mint chopped

1/4 cup cilantro chopped (or use flat leaf parsley)

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

approximately 2-5 cups rhubarb stalks, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2 inch segments, sliced lengthwise if over 3/4 inches wide (the original recipe calls for 2-3 stalks, I used 3 huge stalks and really liked the results)

Heat the oil in a wide pot, I used a 5 qt Le Creuset, cook stirring often until translucent. Push the onions to the side of the pot and add some of the lamb pieces and brown them. As the pieces brown remove them to a bowl and add more pieces to brown.

When all the lamb is brown return the other pieces and collected juices back to the pot and add the coriander, baharat and water. Cover the pot loosely and simmer until the lamb is tender, about an hour. Check occasionally to make sure the stew does not dry out and add more water as needed.

When the lamb is tender season generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then stir in the mint and cilantro. Set the pieces of rhubarb on top of the stew and cover tightly and cook over low heat for a few minutes until the rhubarb is tender. (It is actually also good if you get impatient and turn the heat up and some of it melts into the sauce. I have tried it both ways. Not that I am advocating impatience when cooking, but it happens, especially with hungry children pestering the cook)

Serve with the whole rhubarb pieces on top of the stew with rice.

Vermont Baharat

What is baharat and why am I sharing it with you? Baharat is a spice blend in Middle Eastern and North African cuisine. Baharat actually means "spice" in Arabic and their are many versions. Whenever I have it in the house I find myself adding it to many dishes as a spice rub on meat, or added to a braise or veggie burger. It is a very aromatic and exotic blend that really enhances so many of the dishes I use it in. I encourage you to make some of your own and experiment with it. Although it will also be useful if you wish to cook along with me.

I discovered baharat when searching for a recipe to use the leg of lamb and navy beans I had. I found a lebanese stew that mostly called for basic pantry items, and something called baharat. Of course there was a link to a place to order the spice blend from but that wasn't going to work for dinner that night. Also making my own blend would be much less expensive. If I want to prepare meals within our budget I cannot pay someone else to mix my spices.

So I looked on the internet for a baharat recipe. Thanks to google I found a website with six versions of baharat from different regions as well as uses for the blend. This is one of my favorite, and possibly most insane ways to cook. That is I refer to several versions of the same item and then combine them to my tastes with some alterations all my own. It must look ridiculous when I have cookbooks all over the kitchen all opened to the same dish, looking back and forth at the directions as I cook. This was much easier as all the recipes were on the same page. After looking at the many variations and the spices used I made my own blend with the amounts varied to our tastes, emphasizing the flavors we like best. I also added Mace, I find it really enhances the flavor of many dishes when used sparingly.

We were all out and it has become a favorite when sprinkled on meat about to go on the grill so I made some more the other day. Afterwards I made lentil burgers using the recipe for black bean burgers and 1 tsp baharat instead of all the other herbs and spices. This was a few weeks ago and I am half way through what I made. I just used it again yesterday to make the brisket for Passover. When I sprinkled it on the meat Julian said, remember when we made that? He really enjoyed shaking the spice jar to blend everything.

Vermont Baharat

1 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 tsp sweet paprika

1 1/2 tsp ground cumin

3/4 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cardamon

1/4 tsp ground mace

Place all the ingredients in a container with a tight fitting lid and shake to blend. If you like lamb this is especially wonderful rubbed on lamb before cooking. Although we also love it on steak, in stews, burgers...