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Zaynab Issa’s quick skillet dinner combines two Persian classics: kebab koobideh (grilled kebabs) and mast-o khiar (cucumber yogurt).
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Good morning. Zaynab Issa brought us a great new recipe for what she calls smashed beef kebab with cucumber yogurt (above) that I think you ought to make tonight.
It’s a freestyle mash-up of two classic Persian recipes: the grilled kebabs known as koobideh and mast-o khiar, yogurt mixed with cucumbers. Except there are no kebabs. You just crumble fatty, well-spiced ground beef into a pan, sear it hard on one side, then toast walnuts and raisins in the beef fat and serve everything over the tangy yogurt with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses and a bunch of chopped mint. Maybe with rice or a warm pita? In the kitchen, at least, this weekend’s going to be grand.
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Smashed Beef Kebab With Cucumber Yogurt
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I’m a lucky cat. I don’t just get great recipes from colleagues. Sometimes, I get food from friends. On summer afternoons, I might hear a honk out front and there’s Bruno in his truck coming home from fishing with a big fist of bluefin tuna he thinks I might like. He’s right, and we have poke for dinner, or a big mess of chirashi. In the fall and winter, it might be game: mule deer or a brace of pheasants from friends who know I like this kind of food.
This past weekend, my buddy Noah was in town with his mom, visiting from their home in Park City, Utah. As a house gift, he brought me a hunk of an elk he’d shot during this fall’s hunting season. (He’s 12!) I thought for a moment I’d make a Mississippi Roast out of it, as I sometimes do with venison. But this meat was so lean and fine-grained and beautiful that I didn’t want to risk drying it out. So I took a page from the playbook of the great game cook Hank Shaw and gave it a reverse sear.
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