The Levant and Anatolia · Volume 02, The Steppe, the Fire and a Divided Table

Çiğ köfte

Şanlıurfa and Adıyaman

Illustration

Time: 20 minutes

Researched: 1 source cited

by Şanlıurfa and Adıyaman

The Armenian claim, and the reason it has to be told differently. Before the Genocide of 1915, Urfa, Adana, Maraş and Diyarbakır (Dikranagerd or Diyarbekir in Armenian sources) held substantial Armenian populations, and that population's cooking is now documented almost entirely from outside a living kitchen, through published memoirs, compatriotic-union yearbooks and one extraordinary research project. Houshamadyan, a Berlin-based non-profit founded in 2010 specifically to reconstruct Ottoman Armenian town life region by region, has produced detailed, source-cited cuisine documentation for Urfa, Diyarbekir and the Sandjak of Marash, drawing on named Armenian chroniclers (Mrs Aznig Hagopian-Balian and Mrs Roza Yessayan-Kilejian for Urfa; Dikran Mgount's Echoes of Amida and Anahid Haneyan's The Dialect of Dikranagerd for Diyarbekir; Krikor Kalusdian's Marash or Kermanig and Heroic Zeytun for Marash). It documents, among dozens of named dishes: Kabourgha, stuffed sheep's flank with rice, the direct Armenian-sourced parallel to Diyarbakır's Kurdish-claimed kaburga dolması; Herisa, a pounded wheat and meat dish traditionally made with rooster, the direct parallel to keşkek below; and, in Marash specifically, a named repertoire of raw and semi-raw köfte and patty dishes explicitly including "çiğ köfte" itself, alongside mechev kufdo, takhalokh kufdo, ttvela kufdo and geshgur. This is, on the evidence this chapter's research could reach, the single best-documented Armenian-authored account of pre-1915 Anatolian regional cuisine available.

Read the history

As tradition built it

The modern meatless standard

Serves 6 to 8 as a starter. 20 minutes or more of continuous kneading.

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

300 g fine bulgur (köftelik)
100 g walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp pepper paste
2 tbsp pul biber or isot
1 onion, very finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
To taste spring onion, parsley, cumin, thyme, sweet paprika, black pepper, salt
ice water

Method

Soak the fine bulgur in hot water until softened and swollen, then drain any excess.
Add the tomato and pepper pastes, pul biber, onion, garlic and spices.
Knead continuously for at least 20 minutes, adding ice water a little at a time throughout, until the mixture reaches a smooth, cohesive, slightly tacky paste; the prolonged kneading, not any cooking, is what develops the texture.
Fold in the coarsely chopped walnuts and spring onion and parsley near the end, keeping them slightly coarse for crunch.
Shape into small oval patties by hand and serve with lettuce leaves and lemon wedges, to be wrapped and eaten by hand.

Notes

The dish's popular 4,000-year and Prophet Abraham origin legends are folk legend, not documented history, repeated across low-quality general-interest sources with no credible academic or archival backing found by this chapter's research, and are reported here as legend accordingly.

What a modern chef changes

A machine-controlled knead, for a texture no hand can quite hold steady.

Method

Knead in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, on a low, steady speed for 15 minutes, adding the ice water in a slow, continuous stream, for a more consistent texture than hand-kneading over a longer, more variable time can reliably give.
Toast the walnuts lightly before chopping, for a deeper, rounder nuttiness against the raw bulgur's freshness.
Chill the finished mixture briefly before shaping, so the patties hold a cleaner edge.

Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists