Grandma's Lebanese Recipes: Kibbeh

This is the first of my weekend posts, which won't talk about my life at school. I will post one recipe from my grandmother's cookbook each week. Feel free to make requests in the comments section, and I'll do my best to honor them. Keep in mind her cookbook is specifically Lebanese.

I will post the recipes exactly as they appear in her book, with any notes by me in brackets. The numbering is mine as well, to make the recipes a little more clear, at least I hope so.

Kibbeh
2 lb Beef (ground very fine) [some people make it with lamb]
4c Burghul [a cracked wheat]
1 small Onion (chopped)
3T or more Salt
1.5 c Pepper
1 t Shortening for baking [only needed for second preparation method]

1. Wash burghul and mix with meat, onion, salt, and pepper.
2. Pass thru smallest blade of meat grinder. Mix well with your hands adding water little by little until you get a soft smooth dough.
3. Work dough into small balls. With your finger, make a hole inside balls and stuff with kibbeh stuffing [recipe to follow]. Fry in deep oil.

[second preparation method- follow steps 1 and 2 above first]
Another way to make Kibbeh is to take a piece of the dough, spread a thin layer in a well greased tray and smooth with your fingers.

Put stuffing on top. Cover with another layer of dough.
Smooth top, dipping your fingers in water.

Cut top layer diagonally twice with a thin knife. Insert knife around Kibbeh in tray to let fat go in. Cover with butter or shortening. Bake in a hot oven until firm and brown on top. Serve with any green vegetable or salad with leban. Serves 6.

Kibbeh Stuffing
1 lb meat (chopped fine)
1/2 c onion (chopped fine)
1/2 c pine nuts
5T fat or butter
Fry chopped meat and onion in fat until well done. Add pine nuts and fry for two minutes. Add salt and pepper according to your taste. Cool before using. Makes 1/5 c stuffing.

My Notes

• If you don't have a meat grinder a food processor will work.

• The balls usually taste better and are more fun to eat than the baked kibbeh. Make sure you make the outer crust of the balls very thin, so it gets nice and crispy. Making the outer crust thin takes practice.

• If you are watching your weight, obviously use the baking method, rather than the frying one. You can omit the butter/shortening that is supposed to go on top of the kibbeh and it will still be good.

• This dish is really good with plain yogurt and is frequently eaten this way in Lebanon. Alternately, you could serve hummus with it, but yogurt really complements it perfectly.

I hope everyone gets something out of this segment of my blog; I'm really excited about it. Again, let me know what you think, or if you have any Lebanese recipe requests!

Sausage Day

Today we made lots of sausages, breakfast sausage and pancakes, Italian sausage with peppers and onions and garlic ciabbata, lamb sausage, veal sausage, you get the picture. We didn't get graded today, and we all had a really good time. I am really, really full right now, by the way.

The innuendo was flying, of course. Stuffing sausages is pretty hilarious.

New Equipment: Cryovac and Meat Grinder
Today I was sous chef, so I was pretty much everywhere. First I ground up some meat and made burger patties, then I cryovac'ed those and some bacon that we made last week. I learned how to use both those machines today, which I'm happy about. I pretty much had my hands in everything today.

Some Flattering News
Chef Lauer, the head chef of the entire program, tracked me down today to ask me if I would work at an event this Sunday. I was a little grumbly about it, not to his face of course, because Sunday is race day and I wanted to go to the NASCAR cafe, plus it cuts a day off my three day weekend. I'm doing it, though. Once I have forty volunteer hours I get a certificate and a medal. I have five already from the last event I worked.

New Segment
I am starting a new segment for this blog called Grandma's Lebanese Recipes. Each weekend, or tomorrow for this week, since I have the day off, I will post a recipe from my grandmother's Lebanese cookbook. There are copies of it floating around, but it's rare and usually expensive, so I figured this would be a good way to get her recipes out there. These are the recipes I plan to modify and republish in America, as my first cookbook, and as a tribute to my grandmother.

Big Lamb Day

Lamb Stew, Glazed carrots, Salad Lyonnais, Pommes Anna, Rack of Lamb (5 out of 5!)
Today I worked with Ethan and Tim, just three of us. We had a pretty extensive menu planned for the day, so we blocked it out in 15 minute segments. By the third segment, we were pretty far ahead of schedule, so that was nice. We made Lamb Stew (Navarin de Agneau), which was basically braising lamb, adding some vegetables, and making egg noodles. Tim added bones to the stew, and we got points for building flavor. I made the noodles and cooked them; Ethan did the vegetables.

I made the pommes Anna, which is a sort of potato cake made from very thinly sliced potatoes and butter. It's delicious, but it was undercooked because someone turned an oven down. We didn't get points taken off because it wasn't us that did that. I prefer to make it in a pan, but we were trying a new method today. I will not be adopting this new method.

The salad was pretty good, actually. It was frisee lettuce, onions, homemade bacon, and croutons, with a poached egg on top. Tim made the vinaigrette and I did the rest of it. Apparently poaching an egg is difficult; no one ever sent me that memo. I've never had a problem poaching an egg.

Ethan made the glazed carrots, including tourneing them, which is a huge pain. While the lamb stew was braising, Tim threw in a couple of the racks of lamb that we frenched yesterday. I'm glad he did; none of the other teams got far enough ahead to do it. Now I have dinner for two for tonight- the rack of lamb as well as the stew. Yum.

Rack of Lamb

Today we each had to cut and french a rack of lamb. Frenching is hard, tedious work. Making sure the bones are completely exposed with no skin or meat is a huge pain, but I got mine done. We also made sauteed zucchini and some more little potato croquettes, which we will fry tomorrow. Since frenching the rack of lamb took so long for all of us to do, we didn't eat today.

We found out about our practical exams today. We will have to prepare a chicken dish in one of the cooking styles we've been taught, as well as demonstrate some knife cuts, prepare a rice or potato dish, and prepare a vegetable dish with carrots and a green vegetable of our choice. On top of that, we have to break apart the chicken ourselves and make chicken stock. We will have two and a half hours to do it, so I don't doubt that I will finish, but it will be very tedious.

I'm trying to decide how I want to do my chicken, whether I want to make potatoes or rice (leaning towards rice pilaf), and what vegetable I want to make (leaning towards broccoli). We're allowed to use notes, but not books, which makes sense. I need to have my recipe written out by Monday, which is the same day that my big project for Cost Control is due. There goes my Friday off!

Sole Meuniere

Today we each had to make sole Meuniere, which is fish sauteed in butter with butter sauce. It's really easy and I cooked my fish perfectly. We also made couscous, which we really should have added more stuff to- it was so bland. We made stuffed tomatoes and braised celery as well. I made up the recipe for the tomato stuffing and it was pretty good, but our tomatoes were undercooked.

I have no idea why anyone would want to braise celery. I like it raw or cooked but still crunchy.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more exciting. Today was relaxed because we had our midterm first thing. I got an 84%, which I am just fine with. We had a math test today too. That's pretty brutal for a Monday.

Mussels, Oysters, Osso Buco, Calamari, and Filleting a Flat Fish

We finally ate the Osso Buco that we've been working on all week. I'm not sure it was worth that much time, but it was good. Today the whole class worked together, and I took the lead on the mussels. We cleaned them, steamed them in wine, lemon juice, garlic, and onion, and ate a few of them. Then we cooled the rest down to save for Monday. I have no idea what we're doing with them on Monday, but I do love mussels, so I bet it'll be delicious!

I didn't eat an oyster because I know I don't like them, but I shucked one, and I filleted a flat fish (flounder? I don't know what fish it was). We made a fish stock with the bones and saved the fillets. The calamari was delicious; we all had Norma and Jamie to thank for that.

We formed the leftover risotto into little balls stuffed with bacon and cheese, breaded them, and fried them. Those were the highlight of my day, I gotta say.

Oh, and to elaborate on what I said at the end of my last post:
Pico has left the building. He had something come up and had to move back to California. Everyone was really sad to hear the news; Pico was the most well-liked person by just about everybody in our class. I miss him so much already, and like I thought it would be, class is totally different without him. I need to pick a new favorite person in my class, I guess. We're hoping that he'll come back, but if he does he'll be at least one block behind us. I'd hate him having to take Foundations III again, plus our other two classes right now are incredibly dull.

I do have good news, so there won't be a depressing end to this post: I brought in my transcripts from University of Washington today, and it turns out that I do get out of taking English next block, which is a two hour class that starts at 8:45AM. This means that next block I will have one class, Baking and Pastry, and won't have to be at school until 10:55. This means I get to sleep until 10AM every day if I want to, and I'm sure I will. Looks like all those English classes in college weren't that useless, huh? I'll also save $1200 or something on tuition just for the class I don't have to take, plus I won't have to stress about papers and studying for a whole six weeks.

Veal Blanquette, Veal Cordon Bleu, Glazed Celeriac, Vegetable Saute, Risotto

Veal Blanquette, Veal Cordon Bleu, Glazed Celeriac, Zucchini and Asparagus Saute, Risotto (4.5 out of 5)
We had a pretty good, busy day today. The veal blanquette is like a veal stew, and was the most complicated thing we made. Carl actually made that one. The veal cordon bleu was a team effort; it's just like chicken cordon bleu, so breaded, pan-fried thin pieces of veal stuffed with ham and cheese. Yum! The glazed celeriac turned out decently, as did the saute, which I did by myself. It always worries me when I do things like that alone because I tend to add a lot of garlic. Chef loves garlic too, and told me it was perfect, but on the verge too garlicky for some people. We cubed some ham and threw it in with the vegetables, and Chef loved that. Our half point off was because our risotto was too thick and not soft enough. I think it's because we made it too early and tried to hold it by covering it with foil, so it continued to cook.

Anyway, I have a busy night, plus I have to study, so I should end this here. I got some disappointing news about one of my classmates leaving the program, but I'll wait to post who it is until everybody knows. I'm very, very sad about it, though.