Kofta bel Sabanekh wal Hummus

Preparation

1. Step 1

   Put the ground meat and onion in a bowl. Add salt and pepper, mix well, and work with your hand to a soft paste. Roll into walnut-sized balls and fry briefly in shallow oil, in batches, turning them so that they are brown all over but still pink inside. Drain on paper towels.

   Step 2

   Wash the fresh spinach leaves thoroughly, and remove stems only if they are thick. Put them in a large pan with the butter, and no extra water, over low heat for a minute or so with the lid on, until the leaves crumple into a soft mass. (If using frozen spinach, defrost it and heat it in the pan with the butter until it is soft.) Cut up the spinach very roughly with a pointed knife in the pan, add the drained chickpeas, season with salt and pepper, and stir well.

   Step 3

   Put in the meatballs, stir, and cook with the lid on. In Egypt it was usual to cook a further 1/2 hour, adding a little water, until the meatballs were very soft. I like the meat to be still a little pink inside, so I cook for 5 minutes only.

   Step 4

   The particular refinement of this dish comes from a fried mixture called takleya added in at the end. Fry the garlic in 2 tablespoons oil with the coriander until the mixture smells sweet. Stir this in at the end of the cooking.

   Step 5

   Serve with rice.

2. Variations

   Step 6

   A Turkish way of eating this is smothered in yogurt mixed with crushed garlic and a little salt, pepper, and dried crushed mint. The whole is decorated with a sprinkling of scarlet paprika. In this case, omit the takleya at the end.

   Step 7

   A variation from Iran is khoresh sak, a spinach-and-orange sauce served with rice. The juice of 1 lemon and 2 oranges is mixed with 1 tablespoon flour and cooked with the meat and spinach for 20 minutes. In this case, add only crushed garlic fried in butter, without coriander, at the end.