Kofta bel Sabanekh wal Hummus - ground lean beef

Method

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Serve with rice.
• 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.
• 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.