Name: Kebda Eskandarani
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 27 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Egyptian
Ingredients: 600 g beef liver, trimmed and cut into 5 mm strips; 4 tbsp sunflower oil; 8 garlic cloves, finely chopped; 2 green chillies, sliced; 1 green pepper, cut into strips; 2 tsp ground cumin; 1 tsp ground coriander; 1 tsp fine sea salt; ½ tsp black pepper; 3 tbsp lemon juice; 20 g flat-leaf parsley, chopped; Aish baladi, to serve

Kebda Eskandarani

Alexandrian liver: beef liver cut into strips and cooked in seconds with chilli, garlic and cumin. The whole dish takes twelve minutes and eleven of them are preparation.

27 min total Serves 4 servings Easy

Liver goes from tender to grey and grainy in under a minute, so the pan has to be extremely hot and the liver has to go in dry and in batches. A crowded pan drops in temperature, the liver releases water, and it stews in it — which is exactly how most people ruin this dish. Salt at the end for the same reason: salted liver weeps in the pan before it ever sees the heat.

How to Make Kebda Eskandarani

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Pat the liver strips completely dry on kitchen paper. Do not salt them yet.
Heat 2 tbsp of the oil in a large frying pan until it is genuinely smoking.
Sear half the liver in a single layer for 45 seconds, turn, and give it 30 seconds more. Lift it out while it is still pink inside. Repeat with the second batch.
Add the remaining oil, then the garlic, chillies and pepper strips, and fry hard for 2 minutes.
Stir in the cumin and ground coriander and cook 30 seconds.
Return the liver to the pan, add the salt and black pepper, and toss for 45 seconds — no longer.
Off the heat, add the lemon juice and parsley and serve immediately in bread.

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Worth Getting Right

Dry liver, smoking pan, two batches. All three or it stews.
Salt at the end. Early salt draws out water.
Still pink when it leaves the pan — it finishes on the way to the table.

Ingredient Swaps

Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the green chillies. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

Serve It With

Aish baladi · Torshi · Salata baladi

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Eish Merahrah, Roz Mermah, Egyptian Rice with Vermicelli.

Leftovers and Storage

Best immediately; liver reheats badly. Refrigerated for a day at most.

What's in a Serving

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 No Added Sugar