Coming home a bit late one evening, I was tired and slightly grumpy at having spent much of a lovely afternoon indoors. We were hungry and wanting to make the most of the remaining evening, but there was no food at home. We thought quickly and did a fast swing through the grocery store before heading home and bought ground lamb, whole wheat pita breads (from a local company!) and a fresh cucumber – I had recently been reading through my copy of My Bombay Kitchen and had some idea of making parsiburgers with lots of fresh mint. J, however, wanted to try a recipe from his Street Food book, packing spiced lamb onto skewers and grilling it.

The kebabs were a mixed success – they were very very delicious, but the soft lamb mixture didn’t want to cling to our narrow metal skewers and threatened to fall off every time they were moved. We ended up cooking them on a grilling tray that sits on top of the grates so we wouldn’t lose all of our meat to the coals. Next time we might try chilling the meat before trying to mold it to the skewers. Buying larger, flatter skewers would probably help, too.

The payoff, though, was just what I needed: juicy, spicy, slightly charred lamb stuffed into hot grilled pita breads with a good scoop of minted Greek yogurt and a few vinegar-doused cucumber slices. And a glass of really nice Zinfandel. And a long warm evening with a beautiful sunset. Much better.