Adana kebab plate

Before you start

• flat wide skewers, or a heavy griddle
• coarse lamb mince with about 20% fat — ask the butcher

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 300glamb mince — coarse, and fatty — lean mince makes a dry kebab
• 1large flatbreads
• 60gbulgur
• 300gtomatoes and green peppers
• 1onion
• 2 tspTurkish chilli flakes — pul biber
• 1 handfulflat parsley
• 1 tspsumac

Method

6 steps

1. chop · 7m

   Half the onion grated and wrung out hard in a cloth, the other half sliced paper thin for the salad. Parsley chopped.

2. fold · 5m

   Mince kneaded with the grated onion, chilli flakes and salt for a solid three or four minutes, until it turns tacky and clings to a bare hand. No egg and no breadcrumb — the fat and the kneading are the only binder there is.

3. rest · 30m walk away

   Covered, in the fridge. Warm mince slides straight off the skewer the moment it meets the heat.

4. boil · 18m walk away

   Bulgur into a pan with one and a half times its volume of boiling salted water, lid on, off the heat, and left to drink it all up.

5. grill · 14m

   Pressed into a long flat ribbon down each skewer and onto fierce heat, turned once it releases by itself. Minced meat has to go right through: cut one open and there should be no pink left anywhere and the juices should run clear. Tomatoes and peppers on the edge of the heat until the skins blacken.

6. finish · 4m

   Rested two minutes, then slid off onto the warm bread so it takes up the fat, with the sliced onion, sumac and parsley over the top and the bulgur forked out alongside.