İzmir Köfte

Ingredients

• 500 g minced beef
• 60 g stale white bread
• 3 tbsp milk
• 1 onion
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp salt
• ½ tsp black pepper
• Handful of parsley
• 3 potatoes
• 4 long green peppers
• 3 tomatoes
• Sunflower oil, for frying
• 1½ tbsp tomato paste
• 2 garlic cloves
• 600 ml hot water

Before you cook

• Soak the bread in the milk, then squeeze it out and crumble it into a bowl.
• Grate the onion and press the juice out through a sieve.
• Chop the parsley finely.
• Mix the minced beef with the bread, grated onion, egg, cumin, 1 teaspoon of the salt, the black pepper and the parsley.
• Knead the mixture for five minutes until it is smooth and slightly tacky, then chill it for thirty minutes.
• Peel the potatoes and cut them into thick wedges.
• Slice the tomatoes and crush the garlic cloves.

Steps

1. Roll the chilled mixture into sixteen short fingers about six centimetres long.
2. Heat a centimetre of sunflower oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat.
3. Fry the potato wedges for eight minutes, turning them, until golden but not yet fully cooked, then lift them onto kitchen paper.
4. Fry the köfte in batches for two minutes a side, just to seal and colour them, then drain them on paper.
5. Blister the whole green peppers in the same oil for two minutes and set them aside.
6. Heat the oven to 190°C.
7. Arrange the köfte and potato wedges in alternating rows in a wide baking dish.
8. Tuck the tomato slices and blistered peppers between the rows.
9. Whisk the tomato paste and crushed garlic into the hot water with the remaining teaspoon of salt.
10. Pour the sauce evenly over the dish so everything sits two-thirds submerged.
11. Bake for thirty minutes, until the sauce has thickened and the tops are glazed.
12. Rest for five minutes, then serve straight from the dish with rice or bread.