Sour Cherry Meatballs from Syria (Kabab Bil Karaz)

The recipe is very easy - chop the parsley, mix it with the meat (set aside a little parsley for serving), add the spice mix and salt and knead well. With a damp hand form small meatballs (they can be even smaller than mine in the photos, like soup balls) and fry them or bake them in a hot oven (mine are baked, 20-25 min at 200°C). At this stage they should be almost fully cooked, because they will finish cooking later in the sauce.

To make the sauce, pit the sour cherries and put them in a small pot with a little water. Sprinkle with sugar and a pinch of citric acid, stir well and cook over high heat, stirring and mashing the cherries so they release their juice. Most of the liquid should boil off and the sauce should thicken. Adjust the sweet and sour to your taste, but I advise leaving the sauce more sour to balance the sweetness of the spices in the meatballs. At the end I pureed the sauce, leaving some larger pieces of cherry.

Once the sauce has thickened, lower the heat to very low, add the baked meatballs and stir so they are well coated in sauce. Leave to simmer 10-15 min. This way the meatballs will take on a lovely pink-red color.

I skipped the pine nuts and Arabic bread when serving, just sprinkling with parsley. But if you want to serve Kabab Bil Karaz as they serve it in Aleppo, cut an Arabic flatbread into triangles and arrange them on the bottom of the plate. Pour the kebab on top, sprinkle with toasted pine nuts and parsley. The bread will soak up the sauce and everything becomes even tastier. It is usually eaten with the hands, scooping with the help of the flatbread.