This week's theme "rice" for the #steemit-ironchef initiated by @progressivechef contest inspired me for an interpretation of a wonderful oriental dish I always wanted to try. The hubbies mom uses to make this always when having guests in her house but I could never eat it before because it's traditionally made with minced lambs meat and I don't eat weather baby animals nor any other living beings. When the ingredient for this week was announced I asked the hubby what he would like to eat made of rice and he spontaneous said "Kubba".
Kubbah (or kibbeh, kebbah, içli köfte, koubeiba ...) is a national dish for many Middle Eastern countries and a very popular dish all over in the Middle Eastern cuisine as well as in many Mediterranean and Latin American cuisines. It is a fried dumpling often made of bulgur or rice with a filling of minced onions and minced meat like beef, lamb, goat, or camel meat with middle eastern spices.
Kubba Halab is an Iraqi version of kibbeh created with a rice crust. It got it's name after the largest city in Syria, Aleppo. I watched several YouTube Videos how to prepare this dish because it seemed like it efforts some special manual skills. Of course what I created is far away from the original recipes because I had to replace the meat and still had the ambition to convince the traditional Kubba eaters about my version.
To create the crust I simply had to follow one of the classic recipes. To make a juicy and meaty tasting filling I decided to use a mixture of different mushrooms, onions and scrambled tofu.
These are the ingredients for the crust:
Two cups of basmati rice, two chopped potatoes, six cups of water, a tablespoon of vegetable broth powder, a teaspoon of tumeric powder and half a teaspoon of salt.
I cooked the rice and the potatoes in my rice cooker.
I used more water than usually because the rice should be cooked until really soft and mushy - actually overcooked. It's a good idea to do this a little bit in advance so the rice cools down a bit because it needs a good knead with the hands. My rice was to hot to knead it instantly so I used a potato masher first and kneaded it later ...
The dough has to be very gluey and sticky.
While the rice cooled down I made the filling. That are my ingredients:
A few shiitake mushrooms and two large champignons (finely chopped), a block of tofu (scrambled), one minced onion (missing in the photo), half a bunch of fresh parsley (chopped), some chopped toasted almonds and some raisins, a teaspoon of misopaste, two tablespoons of tomato paste, two teaspoons of a mixture of powdered arabic spices (cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves), salt
Preparation:
I fried the finely chopped mushrooms in a pan with vegetable oil.
Then I and the scrambled tofu and the onions.
When everything was golden brown I added the miso and tomato paste and seasoned with salt and the spices and stirred in the chopped parsley.
I halved the filling and mixed one half with the raisins and almonds.
To form the kubba, it is useful to have a bowl of water to wet your hands again and again so the dough will not stick.
I took a small piece of the dough the size of a walnut. I rolled it in my damp hands and made a hole in the middle to form a cup. I filled the hole with one teaspoon of the filling and sealed it.
To recognized which dumpling has which filling I formed two different shapes: some torpedo shaped with slightly pointed ends for the filling with raisins and almonds and some round and slightly flat for the one without.
I fried the Kubbas in hot vegetable oil until golden brown and crispy.
I served the Kubbas with fresh raw vegetables (green and yellow bell peppers, cucumbers), fresh parsley, pickled olives and chopped tomatoes mixed with pickled mangos (Amba).
This Kubba Haleb is quite a time consuming dish due to the fact that a lot of preparation is needed. However it was definitely worth the time taken to prepare it. We loved to eat it. And the hubbies mom was impressed! 😊
