I finally did it! I did it, I did it! I made kubba batata (potato kubba or kibbe batata) at last! And it didn’t fall apart when I fried it. And it tasted just wonderful. The great kubba experiment has come to a victorious conclusion. Yesss. Years of curiosity, and months of obsessive hard work have paid off–much thanks to my readers who pointed me in the right direction with both suggestions and recipes!
The keys:
1. fine grade bulgur (thank you to Mercedes for the suggestion)
I tried to grind down the bulgur bought at Whole Foods to a finer grade, but it never got as fine as it needed to be. Buy your bulgur at a Middle Eastern market. Just look at the picture above–you can see the difference.
2. The shell contains egg and bulgur, in addition to the potato. The egg will keep your kubba from falling apart during the course of frying.
3. The kubba assembly is the trickiest part. Keep at it. And in my case, ask a person with bigger hands to help out. For some reason, the kubba were easier for my husband to form.
4. And the leftover filling? Use it to make some Uk!
11 responses so far ↓
orionl // January 4, 2008 at 5:17 am
They were indeed very good. I’d love to try them hot.
Rose // January 4, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Can’t wait to try it ! Just the thought of onions, those spices, meat, potatoes makes my mouth salivate ! Then you HAD to post those pictures !
Had to get out the dishtowel to wipe up my drooling !
c(h)ristine // January 5, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I think we’ll be making a larger batch soon and then you’ll all just have to come over.
Leila // January 7, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Leftover filling - make a rice pilaf (roz bi shaghria - with the little fried vermicelli noodles cooked into the rice) and decorate the finished dish with heshwah - filling.
I read through your whole Great Kubba post after commenting - really you have done great research and experimenting on this! and we use the same source for our recipes - Claudia Roden. I used to make baked kibbeh by “feel” - after watching my dad make it - but once I published a recipe to the internet, I wanted to make sure the proportions were accurate. I still fool around with it when cooking and rarely follow the recipe as written.
Claudia Roden is my favorite living cookbook author. I love her. See the NYer profile of her this past fall…
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/03/070903fa_fact_kramer
Leila // January 7, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Heshwah recipe here:
http://bedouina.typepad.com/doves_eye/2004/11/heshwah_recipe.html
and the rice pilaf recipe (also Claudia Roden, because it’s closest to what I do)
http://bedouina.typepad.com/doves_eye/2004/10/roz_bi_shaghria.html
Riana // January 8, 2008 at 10:28 am
omg these look fabulous! ditto on claudia roden she is the best
Sorina // January 16, 2008 at 2:27 pm
That looks delicious…
greeneggsnham // January 17, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Hi, Muffin Top team!
In the last few months, you may remember receiving an email invitation to become a part of the Foodbuzz Featured Publisher Program. With all the recipe-writing and food photography to be completed, we know emails can easily get lost in the shuffle, so Foodbuzz would like to re-extend our offer of inviting you to be a part of our food blogger network. We are very impressed with the quality of your posts and I would love to send you more details about the program, so if you are interested, please email me at Shannon@foodbuzz.com.
And the kubba look AMAZING!
Cheers!
Shannon Eliot
Editorial Assistant, Foodbuzz.com
shannon@foodbuzz.com
c(h)ristine // January 19, 2008 at 10:54 am
Thanks everyone–this is such a beloved food in our family, I’m glad to share it with you. Hope you love it too.
Ashley // March 21, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I’ve never heard of kubba but wow they look amazing!
c(h)ristine // March 22, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Ashley: there are so many different kinds of kubba (this I learned as I researched for the recipe)–but these are my favorite kind for sure.
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