Manti Revisited

I love how easy and elegant this dish is, and perfect for appetizers... not to mention EASY!  It's basically 2 ingredients, the meat and then your wrappers, we're using wonton wrappers.

Start with your filling, you could use beef or lamb mince (ground)

Ingredients:

Wonton wrappers, about 1 package 

Filling: 

- 1 lb ground lamb

Salt & Black pepper to taste

Optional ingredients for filling: 

- Minced fresh mint, or a couple of flakes of dried mint

- onion or shallot, grated finely

- Garlic, minced

- Arabic Seven spice or a dash of allspice

Mix up your filling and then make tiny meatballs, a little bigger than the size of a malteser candy

It's easier if all your meatballs are made ahead and placed on a plate or your cutting board and then you begin filling.

Now grab a wonton wrapper and place a meatball in the middle then dip your finger in water and draw a line down both sides, fold in half sealing both ends and allowing the top to be open. The water keeps it sealed or you could make a slurry of water and flour as a sort of "Glue".  Hold both sides with thumbs and stand it up so that the opening is at the top and your meatball is kind of exposed.  Stand them all up in the pan as I've shown and then heat your oven to 400 and bake until tops and bottom are crispy. No oil is necessary as lamb is pretty oily in itself.
Once crispy remove from the oven and add about 1/2 cup broth to the pan and return to the oven, you want to soften up the wrappers a bit.

Serve on a place warm with the dip or topping of your choice. I go traditional with a whisked heated yogurt mixture and then a drizzle of warm garlicky olive oil with a dash of paprika and a handful of toasted pinenuts.

If you have any leftovers, just throw them in the fridge and the next day add to a pot of stock, they soften up nicely and you got a delicious wonton soup!  

Turkish Manti Dumplings

Last autumn I made an Armenian Manti recipe, with a wonton wrapper shortcut, but this Ramadan I wanted to do the Turkish kind, dough and all from scratch. Also using my homemade yogurt to make the sauce (not that it makes any difference in taste but if you got a big pot laying around you gotta use it ; ) )

It's very simple and the most time consuming part is making the dough and stuffing the little dumplings, the rest just comes together in no time.

So here it goes.

Serves about 6, it's everything in the blue casserole dish (in the last photo, and what is on the serving plate above)

Dough:

3 cups flour

1 egg

Pinch of salt

2/3 cups water

Prepare the flour and salt, make a big heap (think pasta making!)

Crack the egg in the centre and drizzle the water... now with your hand mix the liquid mixture in the middle incorporating flour from the sides of the well of flour as you mix until all is incorporated.

Now it's a dough, keep kneading it for 10 minutes or so until it's soft and pliable.

Cover in cling wrap after forming into a disk and set aside for 30 mins.

Prepare your filling:

-Ground beef or lamb (I used about 1 lb and has a tiny baggie leftover)

- Salt & Pepper

- 1 small onion (finely chopped or grated) optional.
- A bunch of parsley finely chopped. Optional.

Mix it all up and knead, then to make the process easier I made little meatballs, those balls in the photo on the plate were actually too big later so I divided each one into two but still having them laid out like that makes it easier than having to stick your hands in the meat bowl and pull some out every time.

When you're ready to make them divide the dough into 3 portions.

Begin rolling one portion (keeping the others covered well with cling wrap as not to dry out)

Try to roll in a rectangle or square to the best of your ability and roll it very thin, the original recipe says knife thin, the thinner the better I think (think wonton wrappers)

Once your sheet of dough is rolled out cut into squares about 1 inch (that's pretty small) to 1 1/2 (this is what I tried to stick with)

Get a little glob of meat and plop it in the middle then fold the corners up to join in the middle, now seal the sides so you have this cute little shape (like in the photo)

Repeat, repeat, repeat, and then repeat with the other 2 portions of dough.

Bring a big pot of water to a boil, add salt and boil the dumplings until the meat is cooked (if the dough is thin enough you'll see the meat through the sides which makes for a more tender dumpling I think) and once the meat is cooled drain.

To make the yogurt sauce you'll need:

- 2 cups Yogurt

-Salt to taste

-3-4 cloves of garlic, minced

Peel and crush the garlic, add the salt to it on the cutting board and mash it into a paste (the salt helps to soften it) or use a mortar and pestle if you like.

Mix the garlic with the yogurt and set aside.

Red sauce:

3-4 tbsp butter/oil

1 tbsp tomato paste/2/3 tsp paprika

2-3 tbsp water

Dried mint

In a pan add some butter, tomato paste and water, let it simmer for a few mins, then add the paprika (at the end!)

Ladle some yogurt sauce over the manti in a platter, then spoon the red sauce over and sprinkle with dried mint. Garnish with fresh mint.

You could sprinkle red turkish chilli pepper or sumac over if you like.

Making Manti

Some shots of manti making today using a recipe I found a short while ago, it was a perfect thing to do on this chilly November day while sipping a homemade pumpkin spice hot cocoa.

Manti are these turkish (also armenian and variations are made in different regions) dumplings made easy by stuffing a savoury spiced beef (or lamb) mixture into a wonton wrapper and baking until golden then baking one more time with a flavourful broth. The dumplings are tender with golden crispy tips served with yogurt sauce.



Recipe courtesy of My Barbarian Table