Kofta Kebab from the Tomb Raider Cookbook
Kofta Kebabs are a meat dish from the Arabic world, often served as either a kebab, meatloaf or meatball and made with ground beef or lamb. In the Tomb Raider Cookbook's case, it's lamb, and the dish is inspired by Egypt with grated garlic, chopped parsley, minced onion, salt and spices. I've grown up eating a variation of these over the years and have always enjoyed them, so I was keen to try the Tomb Raider version.
The mise en place before and after combining.
Lara Croft visits Egypt as the third country explored in the original Tomb Raider, its first remake Anniversary, its mobile spinoff Reloaded, and presumably the second upcoming remake, Legacy of Atlantis. It is also the setting of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, in which Lara unleashes an apocalypse and fights to stop it, and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, in which she is branded with the mark of Set and must defeat him to remove it.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara mentions that she pursued a professor named Barakat in Egypt during an optional conversation. All that to say, Lara needs no excuse to go artifact hunting in Egypt, and she certainly has access to plenty of Kofta Kebabs whenever she's there.
You put the kebabs onto skewers and either grill or bake them if you lack a barbecue. I don't, and I had planned to grill them, but I happened to make them on a day when it was raining outside, so oven it was. Besides that, I had to consider cleaning the grill after months of non-use during the winter season and there's a risk of ground meat falling through the grates, unlike solid cuts.
Since I wasn't grilling them on skewers and would be cooking the kebabs on a tray, I thought that would risk them flattening out and not cooking in a round, cylindrical shape. I had the idea of putting them on a wire rack above the tray to avoid this, lining the tray with foil so it could catch any rendered fat.
However, this meant they weren't getting enough heat, and so they took longer to fully cook. After the initial 25 minute cook the recipe calls for, I felt confident they wouldn't spread or flatten on the tray and put them directly onto it. Additionally, I could have taken the meat out of the fridge a lot sooner than I did (half an hour before), as that probably affected the cooking time.
The kebabs before and after the initial cook.
Once the kebabs finally cooked, they were absolutely delicious. I made eight as the recipe called for and had three of them, with a guest having the other two and then three leftover for lunch. I served them with a fattoush salad and a dollop of store bought tzatziki.
If you want to make this recipe for Kofta Kebab yourself, you can find it in Tomb Raider: The Official Cookbook and Travel Guide. For the fattoush, I used The Mediterranean Dish's recipe, minus the pomegranate molasses because I didn't have any, and using store bought pita chips instead of making my own.
