Beyin Salatasi
Brains have a reputation for being heavy, rich and generally the sort of ingredient that requires a certain amount of emotional preparation. Beyin Salatası takes a rather different approach.
The lamb brains are gently poached with vinegar, bay leaf, peppercorns and lemon zest, cooled, sliced and then treated almost like the delicate ingredient they actually are. Lots of parsley and spring onion, sharp lemon and vinegar, raw garlic and olive oil do most of the work around them. The result is creamy and incredibly soft, but also bright, acidic and surprisingly fresh.
It is a classic Turkish meyhane dish, and a useful reminder that offal doesn't always need to arrive fried, heavily spiced or disguised beneath a formidable gravy.
Sometimes a brain just needs a good salad.
Yemeni Mutton Mandi
Mandi is traditionally associated with Yemen’s Hadhramaut region, where meat is cooked slowly with heat and smoke while its juices flavour the rice below. Reproducing that setup in a home kitchen requires a little architectural improvisation.
Here, a whole goat leg sits on a rack above a pot of water scented with black lime, whole spices, chillies, peppers and garlic. Three hours in the oven turns the liquid underneath into a broth enriched by everything dripping down from the goat. Then the rack disappears, rice goes into that broth, the leg comes back on top, and the whole arrangement returns to the oven to finish together.
A final blast of charcoal smoke does its best impression of the traditional cooking environment.
It is essentially a three-hour exercise in making gravity season your rice, followed by the extremely satisfying act of putting an entire goat leg on the table.
Lamb Shanks and Olive Casserole
This Lebanese lamb casserole is basically what happens when a slow braise develops a bit of an attitude. Lamb shanks cook until they are barely hanging onto the bone, while olives, seven-spice and pomegranate molasses push the sauce between savoury, briny and sweet-tart. Then there are anchovies, which sound like they have wandered into the wrong recipe but quietly melt away and leave behind a serious hit of umami. Give it enough time and everything collapses into a rich, deeply flavoured sauce that demands bread, rice, or preferably both. Some dishes are simply not designed for restraint.