I went to the Anatolia Doner Kebab House for a late
lunch. It is the new Turkish restaurant
in downtown Albuquerque located at 521 Central NW, actually one-half block
north of the north east corner of 6th and Central. The entire menu consists of kebabs and side
dishes and several sandwiches made with kebab.
I sat in a comfortable booth where I could observe the
kitchen action and noted on the chalk board of daily specials that a plate of
Adana Shish Kebab (Spicy Ground Beef) for $5.99 instead of the usual $7.95
Since I had never had Adana, I ordered it. After a few minutes I saw the chef in the
kitchen take two balls of meat and a sword
and impale the meat balls on the sword and then watched him shape the balls
into long flattened shapes that paralleled but covered the sword’s blade. In another fifteen or twenty minutes a
platter was served with the two elongated adanas on a bed of rice with salad
and a small plastic dish with cacik (yogurt sauce or tzatziki in Greek) with
almost the same pronunciation as the Greek sauce).
The first bite of the Adana Shish Kebab I got imparted a
powerful spicy taste of red bell peppers and chili, so I was glad to have a
dish of cacik to cover up some of some of the spiciness of the meat. The meat was cooked on the outside to a dark
brown as if grilled over live coals but the center of the meat was red and
tender and looked uncooked but it was cooked because of the heat transfer
through the sword. The salad was also
pleasant to eat with bites of the meat.
I really liked the dish and it was a wonderful way of cooking like the
new method of cooking lamb chops we recently adopted to cook the chops on the
flat bone end first, that transmits heat into the center of the chop through
the bone. Also I was amazed that
Turkish Cuisine still honor the tradition of shish kebab of cooking the dinner
on a sword over an open fire. My prior
meal at Anatolia was a special of a flattened grilled Chicken breast. Try Anatolia.
You will like it.
Dinner – When I talked to Suzette in the afternoon, she said
she was going to Costco, so I suggested that I would like something fishy for
dinner. When she arrived at home, she had
two large halibut steaks and a bag of New Zealand cockles (small clams). We decided to fix the halibut for
dinner.
When I asked Suzette what she wanted for a vegetable, she
suggested cous cous with carrots and a tomato.
I suggested that we add a shallot to the cous cous for a bit of onion
flavor. So I started dicing two carrots
and a large shallot and a medium tomato.
I put 2 cups of water in a pot and threw in the shallot. I did not sauté the shallot and carrots in
butter, as I usually do, because I was trying to reduce the butter in the
dish. I coked the shallot and carrots at
medium high heat for about thirty minutes before adding the diced tomato and 1
cup of cous cous. I simmered the cous
cous for ten minutes at low temperature.
Then I threw in two Tbsp. of butter and turned off the heat.
We melted two Tbsp. of butter in a pyrex measuring cup in
the microwave and then added 2 tsp. of fresh lemon juice that Suzette brushed
onto the halibut steaks. We then placed
slices of lemon on the halibut and Suzette grilled the halibut until the meat
was just opaque but still flaked.
I then flaked the cous cous and sit was cooked and little
moist but still delicious. We drank
glasses of Seaglass Pinot Gris from Santa Barbara County, California. The slightly sweet wine went well with the
heavy grilled flakes of halibut and buttery cous cous.
I loved the moist halibut flakes with the moist cous cous.
We saved one-half of the halibut steaks for a fish soup
using the clam broth we planned to cook on Saturday evening.
Bon Appétit
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