So asked Ahsin last week. Marash Girl thought back. "Can I really give her the recipe?"
Jennie started with a fore quarter of lamb. She and Auntie Zabelle and Grandma Yepros would sit around the breakfast nook table on the second floor at 474/476 Lowell Avenue and take apart the fore quarter, separating out the pieces best for shish kebab, the pieces best for chi kufte (no fat, no gristle), the pieces (fat no gristle) best for grinding up and making losh kebab (hamburger, in American parlance), and the pieces best for lamb stew. Next on the agenda would be grinding up the lamb with a hand grinder attached to the wooden kitchen table . . . grinding it twice so it would be of the proper consistency using the coarse blade first, and then the finer blade. (She had already removed the gristle . . . or singir as we used to call it.) Once the lamb was ground for the second time, she would finely chop parsley which she had previously picked fresh from the garden and washed and air dried. Adding a tablespoon or so of tomato paste, salt, black pepper, and finely chopped onion, she would mix the herbs, spices and ground lamb well. (No hot pepper as it didn't agree with the old folks.) Forming the mix into patties, she would broil the burgers in the oven, first on one side, then on the other, and serve them hot, straight from the oven, with rice pilaf and fasuliah! That's the best I can do, folks. You'll have to figure out the proportions for yourselves!
Sounds delicious..and good to grind one's own burger meat. But really hard work, too
ReplyDeleteSounds delicious..and good to grind one's own burger meat. But really hard work, too
ReplyDelete