[44A] Select mutton (10 jin; remove the fat, membrane, and sinew. Mash into a paste), kasni (three qian), black pepper (two liang), long pepper (one liang), finely ground coriander (one liang). [For] ingredients use salt. Adjust flavors evenly. Use the fingers to make “cakes.” Put into vegetable oil and fry.
Rationale for modification of redaction: Essentially, these are spiced ‘lamb-burgers’. We used beef because we had a number of lamb dishes already and several guests with lamb intolerances. I have redacted this recipe as well and will post my redaction sometime at a later date.
Meat Cake Ingredients:
7 kilos Lean Beef Mince
¼ teaspoon Asafoetida
2 Tablespoons Turmeric
2 Tablespoons Black Pepper
1 Tablespoon Coriander Seed
Vegetable Oil for shallow frying
Dipping Sauce Ingredients:
100g plain yoghurt
3 cloves fresh garlic
½ teaspoon black pepper
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of oil
~ Dry basil leaves (crushed) for sprinkling over dipping sauce
* Spicing in this recipe needs to be up to the cook’s taste. I fully recommend that you try this at home and adjust the flavours before unleashing it on your feasting guests.
Method:
Meat Cakes:
- Mix beef mince and spices until well combined.
- Roll and flatten beef mince into patties. We made very small patties of mince mixture that would fry down to approximately two bites.
- In skillet or BBQ plate, add oil to heat (this is for a shallow fry, so adjust amount of oil as required).
- Once oil is hot but not smoking, add meat cakes.
- Cook until done (time is dependent on size of meat cake)
- Turn out on paper towel to remove excess oil.
- Serve hot with dipping sauce.
Dipping Sauce:
- Sweat garlic in oil over medium heat until blistered. Cool.
- Just before serving, press garlic through garlic press into yogurt and add pepper and salt. Mix to combine. Sprinkle the top of the sauce with crushed dry basil leaves.
Assumptions:
- Fortunately, most of the ingredients from the original recipe easily correspond to known ingredients.
- So with this adaptation, we used beef because we needed another meat dish to feed our non-lamb eating, meat eaters. Because of this Master Drake changed the spicing to bring the beef flavour forward on the palate. We both agreed that the spices used with the beef are seen in other recipes and work well.
- Master Drake also added the dipping sauce to enhance the dish.
Notes:
- This is a dish in high demand. Our guests always seem to like it.
- The idea behind this feast was to demonstrate to the guests that Yuan Chinese/Mongolian dining doesn’t have to be scary. Because of this, we wanted to make sure that each dish was tasty and accessible.
- I have a more accurate redaction of this recipe that I will post later in the year.