The Tantuni

Tantuni

Here is the recipe comes from one of my readers who grew up in Mersin the place which is popular with Tantuni. You can see the recipe below in original way he sent…

ingredients

1 lbs beef or lamb, diced really tiny
cooking oil
salt
for onion salad

2 onions
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
olive oil
salt
sumac
Directions

1. Boil the lamb/beef pieces slightly. This will prevent it from hardening when you pan fry them in oil later. Add some salt to the water if needed

2. Finely chop the onion & parsley. Place them in a deep cup, add sumac & salt. Mix them by hand or a good utensil. Sumac should get concentrated in one place

3. Put some vegetable, canola or sunflower oil on a pan. Don’t fill it up, just a thin layer to cover the pan is adequate. Get a glass of water and keep it next to your pan. Also get some ground hot red pepper ready

4. Heat up the oil and add the meat. Just after a couple of minutes add ground red pepper and keep mixing.

5. This is important: When the oil gets too hot, it’ll splash around and will burn the meat. To prevent that, add a splash of water in the pan. Some of it will vaporize instantly and will take out the extra heat from the pan and the meat. This will keep the meat tender.

6. Around the time the remaining water in the pan is about to vaporize, cover the pan & the meat with the Pita. It’s best if you use lavash as the bread. Pita in US are too thin, fragile and hard to this dish.

7. Let it warm up a bit and turn down the heat.

Take out the pita, place it on a plate. With a spoon take a little (not too much or it’ll be too thick of a roll) meat, spread it along the lavash in a thin line

1. Add your onion mix, some salt and some crushed or ground pepper & roll tightly

It sound challenging & long but each roll takes only 1-2 min to cook, especially if you get your meat in smaller pieces. Too big and it’ll be hard to chew on.