Levantine · Starter
Kibbeh Maqliyeh
- Advanced
- 60 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, a sweet edge rounding the corners, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 300 g fine bulgur, grade 1
- 400 g lean lamb leg, well chilled and twice minced
- 80 g onion, grated
- 6 g ground allspice
- 3 g ground cinnamon
- 1 g ground clove
- 12 g fine salt
- 100 ml iced water
- 250 g minced lamb shoulder, for the filling
- 150 g onion, finely diced
- 60 g pine nuts
- 40 g samneh
- 5 g ground allspice, for the filling
- 15 g pomegranate molasses
- 1.5 litres sunflower oil, for frying
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rinse the fine bulgur, squeeze it dry in your fist and leave it to swell for 10 minutes while you make the filling. 10 min
- Fry the diced onion in the samneh until soft, add the shoulder mince and cook until it loses its raw colour and the fat runs, then stir in the pine nuts, allspice and pomegranate molasses and cool it completely.
- Work the lean lamb, grated onion and spices to a smooth paste, blend in the bulgur, then knead with iced water a splash at a time until the dough is tacky, cold and takes a fingerprint without cracking.
- With wet hands, open a walnut of dough around one finger into a shell no thicker than a coin, fill it, seal the mouth and taper both ends to a torpedo, smoothing the seam under a wet thumb.
- Fry a few at a time at 180C (355F) until deep brown and floating, 4 to 5 minutes, then drain them standing on end so the seams stay dry. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Shaping by hand 85 recipes
- The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
- Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
- The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
- Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
- They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.
Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
- Also Right
- Malbec
- From the Taps
- Porter
- Zero-Proof
- Pomegranate spritz
Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.
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