I love these little meat pies (sfiha? sfeeha? Am I even close??) and I want to try making them myself. I am a little reluctant to try some random recipe off the Net because all of these recipes call for lamb and I have never cooked lamb before.
Anyone have any recommendations?
Grab the recipe, and run with it. You have to cook lamb for the first time sometime!
On a lazy weekend day in the winter is the perfect time to play with a new recipe. No guests, no stress form work, just you the kitchen and the ingredients. If you screw it up, then come back here [with pie] and we can discuss what happened and what to try different the next time.
And you can rarely substitute ground meat of any species for diced, cubed or even some versions of coarsley chopped … so follow the recipe pretty much exactly the first time =)
And dont worry!
I agree; and spiced lamb is freakin’ terrific. My only recommendation is to make sure you are getting Australian or NZ lamb, not American.
Well, that depends. There are an increasing number of smallholders raising lamb for an increasing halal market, and the meat is as good or better than the over pond, depending on diet and care.Interesting point though. When I was in Scotland, I expected the lamb to be terrific because of the climate but I found it to be a lot tougher than the Australian or NZ produce. I have never tried USA lamb.
A Greek friend of mine goes into a tirade if he hears "lamb" and "British Isles" in any context. Swears the Brits only eat mutton. Could be, especially if the animal is for wool production.
OP, cooking ground lamb is similar to cooking ground beef, and IMO, without the contamination concerns of ground beef, confidence arising from knowing the butcher and adherance to kashrut and halal guidelines. Grinding your own would give much the same assurance.Crawling out of lurkdom because I’ve been searching for years for a recipe for lebanese meatpies my father’s family made when I was growing up. I know it had ground lamb, finely chopped onion and shredded potatoes. Not sure of the spices. The problem I’m having is that I don’t know how to spell the name for them. We pronounced them fa-thigh-ed, or something close to that, but I have no idea how it is spelled to do a proper search. All the lebanese meat pie recipes I’ve found online don’t seem to be correct. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!
I gave up on making lamb when I couldn’t get a decent source of it. It wasn’t that hard to cook but the local supermarket’s offerings seemed spoiled. The expiration dates were okay but I don’t know…it just smelled funky.
So my advice to you would be to find a place that sells a lot of it, where you figure it will be fresh.
It should always have a neutral smell. Hell, even I can do a decent roast lamb- easiest there is.
Sorry to continue the hijack, but I picked up a boneless, butterflied leg of American lamb yesterday. I, too, prefer NZ lamb, but it’s hard to find around here. Anyway, I was expecting to be disappointed, but after a marinade of olive oil, garlic and rosemary, I grilled it and it turned out freakin’ awesome. It was much less expensive than the NZ stuff too.
I’d love to hear how the meat pies turn out.
To continue the hijack- how much would you guys pay for Aust/ NZ lamb roast there- say a leg of lamb and also lamb chops?
At Costco here in Charlotte, a frenched rack on NZ lamb used to run $18 - $22 depending on weight. Now they carry Australian and I don’t find is as good. The boneless leg of American I got last night was $13 and had significantly more meat.
Is that per kilo or per pound?
That was a total price. I don’t recall the per pound price, but the leg I had last night was 3.5 lbs, so that must have been roughly $3.99/lb. The NZ rack was probably about $6.99/lb.
That would be a relief, as American lamb always has a strong, gamey flavor to me.
If you haven’t already, run out and pick up “Lebanese Cuisine” by Madelain Farah (ISBN 0-9603050-1-7)
Sfiha (Lahm bil-`Ajin) and Ftayir are very similar. I make ftayir frequently. Even though I’m Scotch/Irish and my wife is the Lebanese one, she doesn’t cook.
The basics are bread dough (or refrigerator biscuits if you are in a hurry/lazy), coarsely ground lamb, fine chopped onion, pine nuts, cinnamon, salt & pepper. I like to add a (very) little allspice and about double the cinnamon.
Also, once you get the book, try Lebanese baklawa, you’ll never eat the standard honey overdose baklava again (but add some orange blossom water to the simple syrup recipe - about half the amount of rose water, trust me on this.)
They were a success! We used http://www.waleg.com/kitchen/archives/009498.html for the recipe, and it turned out pretty good. The lamb was really hard to find, so next time I will probably use ground beef or maybe even turkey.
Bobotheoptimist, I will definitely check out that book!