Honey & Co: Mishmishiya - lamb meatballs in apricot and tomato sauce

M

marilynfl

Moderator
Alrighty....this one is hard to call.

The GOOD:

The flavor of this dish is quite lovely although fussy to prepare. You have to prepare two different spice blends from the book (one sweet and one savory) just for the meatballs plus add grated fruits and veggies.

Sweet Blend Ingredients: cardamom pods; whole cloves; nutmeg; fennel seeds; mahleb; ground ginger; ground cinnamon

Savory Blend Ingredients: dried chilies; coriander seeds; cumin seeds; ground allspice; white pepper; turmeric; plus a healthy scoop of the sweet blend.

Mine didn't end up exactly like the recipe because I didn't have/didn't know about "mahleb" which is some sort of cherry stone and a common Middle Eastern spice. Also, it called for a lot of cardamom pods and ground cardamom and I was down to the bottom of my spice jars on both of those. Finally, because I've been testing Biscoff's knock-offs and many have too much cinnamon in them, I cut back on the large amount of cinnamon I was supposed to use.

All those changes and it was still delicious.

The BAD: Used Publix Greenwise (organic) lamb and it still smelled like lamb, which--if you like lamb--is a good thing. Larry likes lamb and was quite happy. I opened the fresh package and got slapped in the face with eau de lamb scent. Once everything was in, I cooked a tiny meatball to check the seasoning and it smelled lamby while cooking, but didn't taste gamey as I expected. Took the finished product out of the oven and it smelled like lamb, but didn't taste it. Pulled it out of the refrigerator to have it last night and immediately got hit again with the lamb odor, but once it was warmed up, I couldn't taste it.

So...if I wasn't around to prepare it, cook it, roast it, refrigerate it, and reheat it--and only ATE IT--I would have never known it was lamb and would have been quite content. Again, Larry loved it and said he couldn't smell any lamb odor.

I--on the other hand--recently picked up Lay's Gyro chips and gagged on the first bite because of the faux lamb odor.

The UGLY: The apple, onion and potato are all grated and squeezed to remove excess moisture. Since I was busy heating up whole spices and grinding them and bi+ching about running out of cardamom pods and ground cardamom, I pulled out the food processor and used the "grating blade". Unfortunately, it created long threads of apple, onion and potato and it didn't occur to me to break those down further. I thought they would do that themselves during the 15 minute browning, 30 minute cook time on top of stove and the 40 minutes cook-time in the oven.

But NO...they didn't. So the meatballs end up quite ugly, with long shreds of...things...attached to them. But still tasty. Next time I will finely grate these ingredients so they blend in better with the meat.

The SURPRISING.

There is an entire BUNCH of cilantro in this (half in the meatballs and half in the sauce) yet it is not overwhelming. And the orange slices and dried apricots add a lovely taste. I ended up pulling out the cooked oranges and pushing them thru a hand juicer to get those flavors back into the sauce.

Served over basmati rice with creamed corn (I don't know why...I was just craving it), hummus, pita, yogurt with cucumbers.

 
Aha!! You've had a breakthrough!! And interesting. I like lamb but also recognize

you really do smell it while cooking (which I don't mind). But the taste is fine. And the cilantro is interesting also. DH cannot stand it "raw", but when cooked (had a cilantro soup in Aspen one time) it was fine, which I think is what you found out.
Good rec. The spice mixes were daunting!!

 
I'll definitely try it again, just to improve on my mistakes. Maybe I'll mix it with buffalo

meat to cut the amount of lamb.

 
thanks for the great recap. I'm right there with you on the lamb dislike. no matter what kind I try

 
Speaking of lamb----I just went on a hunt for a good leg. We're used to

finding whole and half legs in any supermarket, but not here.

After the third Ingles, finally found one in the "upscale" market.

It is one of those organic ones. Hope it doesn't taste gamy.

I saw that someone earlier recommended Australian lamb, I have always found it to be strongly flavored---probably grass fed.

I read somewhere that if the slaughtered animal is around others in heat, the meat gets more of that lamb smell.

Mine will get butterflied, marinated in lemon, olive oil, oregano and grilled---along with evelyn's Greek potatoes.

 
I'm so glad you're posting your progress working through these recipes. I got the book

as a gift a couple weeks ago and it's taken me a while to warm up to it. Your enthusiasm is driving me to dig deeper and start flagging some recipes. Thanks, Marilyn. Much appreciated. smileys/smile.gif

 
I think you live in the Carolinas. I have rarely seen whole legs of lamb

any time we have lived here--bone in.. Harris Teeter has semi-boneless lamb legs and Costco has boneless lamb roasts. I have butterflied them often--delicious.
I'm sure with Publix in the market now, there will be some there. Lamb is just not a favorite meat in the South.

 
I made Evelyn's Potatoes this week. However, I think I used too many potatoes for the amount of

seasonings. I am assuming the recipe calls for at least 4-5 lbs of potatoes at 8-10 ounces per potato, which I would consider large. Even if they come much larger here, lol. However, I have no idea what size a large potato would be in Greece. Just wondered how you make it. I was cutting the recipe way down with 1.25 lbs of smaller potatoes.

I remember Evelyn had commented at Gail's that she didn't have the gigantic zucchini that someone had used in her Briami, which threw off the proportions.

 
Many of my older (1980's cookbooks) define a potato as *fist-sized* and so

I tend to use that as my metric. Which means most American Russets would be considered TWO potatoes. Same issue with apple recipes. They are MUTANTS now...half a pound each. So for an older recipe, one current apple will take the place of two, possibly even three apples.

 
I found a potato that was as fist-sized as I could , it weighed 6 ounces and wasn't very big. You

may be on to something. Here, it's hard to find bakers under 12 ounces and most are even larger. Texas sized, lol.

 
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