August 2, 2012 - Dinner - Pita stuffed with lamb, cacik, and tabouli

I was out fetching my bike from the bike shop around 5:00 p.m. when Suzette called to ask me to pick up a bag of fresh pita bread on the way home because she had an idea for a new dish.  I stopped at Sahara Restaurant on Central across the street from UNM and bought a bag of 6 fresh pitas for $2.99.

When I got home we discussed Suzette’s idea.  We decided to heat slices of lamb in a skillet and then stuff pita with the lamb and tabouli.  I like my lamb sandwiches with cacik sauce, so I found a recipe in Nigella Lawson’s Always Summer Cookbook at page 57.

Cacik is the Turkish word for what the Greek call tsatsiki, a cucumber and yogurt sauce spiced with garlic and cooled with mint.

Cacik

1 cucumber (Armenian)

18 ounces whole milk Greek yogurt (from Costco)

1 tsp. dried mint

1-2 tsp. salt

1 cup chopped mint leaves

1-2 cloves of garlic, depending upon the size and intensity

Extra virgin olive oil to drizzle

I made about a ½ recipe by estimating the ingredients but used three small cloves of fresh garlic from our garden, which gave the sauce too intense a spiciness when fresh but mellowed after a day of being stored in the fridge.  The dried mint is very important because when crushed finely, it emulsifies and gives the sauce a smooth texture.

I sliced the lamb as thinly as I could and Suzette lightly sautéed it in a skillet with olive oil.

I sliced and julienned two slices of a large tomato and sliced thin slices of cucumber and fetched the PPI tabouli from Sunday’s Mediterranean pot luck dinner from the fridge and cut the pitas in half and heated them in the microwave.  Then we each took a warmed pita and carefully opened the walls to make a pocket and stuffed warm lamb, and cool cacik and tabouli and sliced tomato and cucumber into the pocket for a delicious sandwich.  This was the best new dish in a long time and a wonderful summer dish that is both warm and cool and full of fresh ingredients from the garden.

I drank a glass of PPI Pay d’ Oc Merlot and we each drank mojitos. A very minty dinner, with mint in the cacik, the tabouli, and in the mojito syrup and fresh in the drink.

Bon Appétit