Mediterranean Dinner, February 20, 2009

Mezze

Whole Grilled Sardines with Triscuits and grain mustard
Watermelon Radish Pickles, fennel wedges, and romaine spears with lebni and babbhaganoush
Mussels marinated with white wine, fennel, and onion
Manti of lamb and veal with garlic yogurt, paprika butter, and mint

Dinner

Braised Beef Brisket
Whole Tai Snapper with kumquats and fennel
Eggplant and red pepper melange
Roasted purple and red potatoes
Couscous from the yellow tagine

Dessert

Prune and almond tart
Lemon risotto cake topped with kumquat sauce

perfecting the Manti

Jon and I are getting ready for a trip to Turkey, where I hope to expand my sample selection of manti (lamb dumplings), and eventually develop the perfect hybrid recipe. My filling is steadily growing more flavorful and succulent; in the most recent batch I used a mixture of ground lamb and veal, which added a significant tenderness. I still think they could use more fat, either from a fattier cut of lamb or as Jon suggests, by adding in some chopped pork fat or bacon. I'm also considering cooking the filling before stuffing the dumplings, as a bit of a sear on the meat might add a dimension of flavor. As with most things dumpling, the more egg and onion I add the better the filling seems to taste. Sweet and spicy Hungarian paprika imported by my mother has also been a good addition to the mix. Eventually I will need to work on the wrapper. So far I was most pleased with the wonton wrappers we purchased at a Safeway in Tuscon. They were very fresh, soft when boiled, and used a minimum of corn starch. Berkeley Bowl has stiff yellow wonton wrappers, and the two brands I tried from Richmond's Ranch 99 market were fresher but suffered from an over-abundance of cornstarch. At some point I will make them with a homemade wrapper dough, which I can roll out in the pasta maker Jon found for me at a yard sale. The most "authentic" Turkish manti seem to be made with hand-rolled dough and are very tiny little pyramids, but these have never quite satisfied my desire for biting into a good-sized portion of filling. I'm currently aiming for a version of the larger dumplings I first encountered at Khyber Pass in the East Village; perhaps I should be reading up on Afghani dumplings as well. Still, I have hope that somewhere in Turkey I may be converted to loving the smaller version, as there seem to be entire towns devoted to the art of manti making.