by Diana
One of my dearest Venezuelan friends comes from a Syrian origin family as I do. When we were at high school one of our hobbies was to make arabic food together, not only to celebrate our family's common culture, which brought us closer of course, but also to exchange recipes from my grandmother's notebook and from her mum's memory, and sometimes, one of our main motivations, to try to sell them to her neighbours so we could gather some money to go out!
The following recipe is one of those that I learnt from her and her mother. It is what I consider a modern version of kibbe or kibbeh -an arabic dish- but in shape of burgers. I had to modify it for many reasons: the original recipe uses wheat instead of couscous, but I only had couscous and it works just fine for this one. I also prefered to use turkey mince because is less greasy than meat mince -in this country-. And I added some extras like mint leaves and sesame seeds, just because I had the creative mood on and couldn't stop. However, it is the same principle that I learnt years ago with my friend, and most importantly, equally delicious!
I hope you try it at home!
Enjoy!
 |
| © Diana Chaccour |
Ingredients
Yield: about 8 burgers
For the burgers:
150 g couscous
180 ml hot water
350 g couscous
1 egg
1 teaspoon five-spices (or pinch of ground cinnamon, ground black pepper, ground cloves, ground anise)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
50 g mint, chopped
2 small spring onions, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
50 g toasted sesame seeds
1 red onion, grated
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoon extra virgen olive oil
 |
| © Diana Chaccour |
For the Tzatziki:
1 cucumber, pealed and cut into cubes
25 g mint, chopped
25 g parsley, chopped
25 ml extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
 |
| © Diana Chaccour |
Preparation method
To make the burgers, place the couscous in a bowl and cover with 180 ml of hot water, or until the water is 1 cm above the level of the couscous. Allow 5 minute for the couscous to absorb the water. Then add the meat and the rest of the ingredients. Season generously and use your hands to mix everything, until you obtain a homogenous dough.
 |
| © Diana Chaccour |
Now take a hand full of the mixture and make a ball, then flat it until it is about 1.5 cm thick.
Preheat a frying pan and when it is hot place the burgers and cook them at medium heat for about 7 minutes on each side until they are completely cooked. Please notice that you won't need to add any oil to the frying pan, since the burgers contain olive oil already.
 |
| © Diana Chaccour |
Now, to make the salad, mix all the ingredients in a bowl and season generously with salt and fresh ground pepper. Add the olive oil and garnish with a few mint leaves!
 |
| © Diana Chaccour |
Serve the burgers with the tzatziki on the side. I also accompanied them with some home-made hummus and it was absolutely delicious. Enjoy!
 |
| © Diana Chaccour |
No comments:
Post a Comment