Iraqi Kofta with Eggplant and Rice

 Will miracles never cease?! I thought there did not exist a recipe in which I could find a way to love eggplant. I mean, it's okay, and I was raised to eat whatever is put in front of me, but it's never been my go-to food. This recipe, with a homemade "Arabic 7 spice" has made all the difference. 

In this time of COVID, I try not to travel more than necessary. So when I couldn't find Arabic 7 spice in the local health food store, I googled how to make a substitute. You are gonna want to write this down. Ready? Ok: equal parts (I used 1/2 tsp measure) of ground pepper, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, cloves, and ginger. I had to run to the neighbor's to borrow some coriander.

The meat in this recipe is ground beef, but when I did research online, I found that you could also use ground lamb. And I've taken a liking to lamb, thanks to this cookbook, so I used a pound of lamb mixed with maybe a 1/4 to a 1/2 pound of ground beef. The "kofta" is a spiced meatball. This particular recipe gets a bit fancy for my capabilities. One is supposed to take the eggplant slices, which you have salted and fried, and wrap them around the meatballs before baking in a tomato sauce. I couldn't quite do it. The meatballs kind of fell apart while frying in olive oil (not a lot of binding material) and so I just put everything into an ovenproof dish and baked it for ten minutes. Next time, I think I might use bulgur wheat as a binder with the meat. Serve over white rice or vermicelli. Sprinkle with fresh parsley. It tastes spectacular! 

Oh, the recipe calls for plain crushed tomatoes, but all they had on the shelf was diced tomatoes with green chilis. So that's what I bought, and it really complimented the Arabic 7 spice.



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