Lamb Kebabs with Tzatziki

This platter is over-the-top good! I love that eating this is decadent, garden fresh and feels healthy. So many people I know swear they don’t like lamb until they eat lamb dishes that I make and this is one of them. Ever since discovering how to remove the lactic acid from my cottage cheese, yogurt and sour cream my dishes with these things now are more elevated. To remove the lactic acid I put these items in a coffee filter that I set in a sieve and put over a bowl for the tangy liquid to drain out and into. I cover the sieve and bowl well and let it sit for a day or two which thickens things up. My Greek yogurt sitting in a coffee filter this way for a few days turns into a luxurious cream cheese, but without all of the fat and fillers.

To make the Tzatziki sauce for this platter I use about a cup of this cream cheese-like Greek yogurt, and add in fresh mince garlic, at least two to three large cloves worth, but usually more. Salt the Tzatziki well. Some fresh lemon zest or peeled and seeded chopped fresh cucumber have been great additions, but I just used the garlic and salt this time and had the cucumber on the side instead. When I chop up my garlic I let it sit on the cutting board for at least fifteen minutes before adding it to the yogurt. This lets the strong spiciness of the fresh garlic mellow a bit. This Tzatziki can be made and refrigerated days ahead.

For the meat add one pound of ground lamb to a bowl. Add in a half teaspoon of baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon ground Ceylon cinnamon, one egg and one teaspoon of salt. On a box cheese grater, on the large grate, grate up a large onion. This part is IMPORTANT, put the grated onion in several layers of paper towels or in a thin dish towel and squeeze out all of the liquid from the onion. It is quite surprising how much liquid comes out of doing this. These dry onions add flavor without making the meat mushy. I use a wire potato masher to mix this all together. Let this sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, but as little as fifteen minutes will do. I saved my sticks from when I use fresh rosemary from my garden and dry them and I used these sticks as my skewers. Ideally it is good to soak the sticks in water for twenty minutes before putting them on a grill. Take a portion of meat and roll it into a cylindrical shape and put the skewer through the middle of it. Squeeze this tightly onto the skewer especially the ends so they don’t fall off. I cooked a couple of my kebabs on a couple of metal skewers to see what kind of difference it might make and the meat stayed on the wood ones better. I had intended to cook these kebabs on my outdoor gas grill, but I couldn’t figure out how to swap out the empty gas tank for a fresh one, I just didn’t have time to look it up on YouTube, so I quickly switched gears and cooked these on a cast iron grill pan.

To cook these on the stove on a pan such as this I used beef tallow. I cooked them on medium heat and cooked all sides then turned them down and cooked them on low to be sure that the centers were done. I served these with my Tzatziki, fresh seeded cucumber, tomatoes from my garden and sweet Maui onion.