Name: Arayes
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Lebanese
Ingredients: 400 g lamb mince, 20 per cent fat; 1 small onion, grated and squeezed dry; 30 g flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped; 1 tomato, deseeded and finely diced; 1 ½ tsp ground allspice; ½ tsp ground cinnamon; 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt; ½ tsp black pepper; 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses; 4 large round pitta breads; 2 tbsp olive oil; Lemon wedges; Toum

Arayes

Pitta stuffed with raw spiced lamb and grilled until the bread crisps and the fat from the meat soaks into it. Fifteen minutes, and better than that sounds.

30 min total Serves 4 servings Easy

Where This Goes Wrong

The meat goes in raw. Cooking it first wastes the whole idea.

Spread it thin — 5 mm, no more.

Weight the top so the bread and meat stay in contact.

Arayes, in preparation
Photograph credit: Mosquée El Feth - Ain Arayes - panoramio by habib kaki · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Cooking Arayes

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Mix the lamb with the onion, parsley, tomato, spices, salt, pepper and molasses. Work it for a minute until it holds together.
Split each pitta around the edge into two discs but leave one side joined, like a book.
Spread a quarter of the raw meat inside each in a thin, even layer no more than 5 mm thick, right to the edges. Press closed.
Brush both outside faces with olive oil.
Heat a heavy frying pan or griddle over medium heat. Cook the arayes two at a time with a weight on top — another pan works — for 6 minutes.
Turn and cook 6 to 7 minutes more, until both faces are deep gold and crisp and the meat is cooked through at the centre.
Cut into wedges and serve immediately with lemon and toum.

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Why the Method Works

Everything good about arayes comes from the meat being raw when it goes in. It renders as it cooks and the fat has nowhere to go except into the bread, which fries from the inside — that is the whole trick, and pre-cooking the lamb loses it entirely. Use lamb with real fat in it, spread the layer thin so it cooks through in the time the bread takes to crisp, and press the whole thing under a weight so the two surfaces are in contact.

Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping

Best immediately. Refrigerated for 2 days; re-crisp in a dry pan rather than a microwave.

What to Serve Alongside

Toum
A tomato and mint salad
Pickled chillies

Arayes Nutrition Facts

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Dairy-Free