Lamb Kofte and Fattoush

I’ve been reading a lot about sumac recently and having managed to track some down, decided to use it in lamb kofte with fattoush. The kofte recipe is Jamie’s and uses almost a whole jar of sumac which neither of us really felt it needed, I think I’d probably halve that next time.

The fattoush is an amalgamation of a variety of recipes I found online and based on what we had available, the recipes I came across varied wildly so it’s hard to tell how authentic this was. What was really un-authentic about it was that we left out the toasted pitta bread since we were eating the lamb and salad on top of a flatbread.

We also made up a dressing by adding some lemon juice, spring onion and garlic to some natural yoghurt.

Stephen really enjoyed this but I wasn’t so keen, the huge amount of spices in Jamie’s recipe meant the meat was very dry. I’m not sure about the texture of the sumac either, I found it very gritty and think it would benefit from grinding before being added to the kofte mixture.

Fattoush – Serves Two

Salad

Half cucumber, deseeded and sliced into half-moon sized pieces
4 tomatoes, chopped
4 spring onions,
finely sliced
Lettuce leaves, chopped
Small bunch mint, finely chopped

Dressing

150ml olive oil
2 lemons, juice and zest
1/2 garlic clove, crushed
30g sumac
Salt and pepper

Blend all ingredients for the dressing together and pour over the salad.