The Levant and Anatolia · Volume 02, The Steppe, the Fire and a Divided Table
Testi kebabı
Cappadocia
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- 1 source cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Cubed meat and vegetables are sealed into a small, unglazed clay pot made from Kızılırmak riverbed clay, traditionally thrown by potters in Avanos, and cooked entirely on their own released liquid and steam. The pot is broken open, or its dough seal cut away, at the table.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. Around 2 hours, plus the dough seal.
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
- 700 g lamb shoulder or beef shin, cubed
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 tomatoes, diced
- 1 green pepper, diced
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- To taste salt, black pepper, a little tomato paste
- a stiff flour-and-water dough, for the seal
Method
- Combine the lamb shoulder or beef shin, onion, tomato, pepper, garlic and seasoning in the clay pot, adding a spoonful of tomato paste and no extra liquid.
- Mix flour and water into a stiff, workable dough and pack it firmly around the pot's neck to seal it airtight; a small pinhole can be left in some traditions.
- Set the sealed pot into hot embers, or a domestic oven preheated to 250°C, and cook for around two hours, never opening it.
- Bring the pot to the table sealed and crack it open in front of the diners, either by cutting the dough seal away or, more traditionally, striking the pot itself along a deliberately weak line near the neck.
Notes
No source consulted for this chapter gave a traditional ember or oven temperature in degrees; the domestic 250°C figure above is a documented home-oven adaptation, not a claim about the traditional method's own heat.
What a modern chef changes
Precision from the bag, theatre from the pot.
Rung 2
Method
- Vacuum-seal the meat and vegetables with the same seasoning, and cook sous vide at 62°C for 12 hours for lamb shoulder, until fully tender but still holding its shape.
- Transfer the finished contents, with their own cooking liquid, into a preheated clay testi pot, seal with the traditional dough plug, and finish in a very hot oven or on Big Green Egg embers for 15 to 20 minutes, just long enough to build aroma and heat the pot through.
- Bring it to the table sealed, and break it open there, exactly as tradition does, so the vacuum bag's precision never costs the dish its theatre.