benazir's blog

Camel Kabob

I have just watched The Wiz three times since it has been on Netflix and it brought me to a time when I first seen this very same movie at a cinema when I was a kid. I loved it then and I really love it now because it is a classic. However I have gotten comfortable and had dozed off the first time around since it came to Netflix. que

I also watched Bohemian Rhapsody which is a bio pic about Freddie Mercury and his band Queen. I grew up with this band and it is on the soundtrack of my life. Fast forword to the elephant in the room segment is when Freddie Mercury contracted AIDS, he did not want to disclose to anyone for a while. Understandable that he wanted to process it first.

Rightfully so because in the earliest days for this horrible pandemic, there was a lot of stigma about it and people got ostrisized because of this. The Austrailtians calls this putting people in coventry. This is completly cutting people off having absolutly nothing to do with them. I had a childhood friend who died from AIDS also and It still is heartbreaking. He was such a funny guy. Now thank God to people like Elisabeth Taylor, Elton John and Princess Diana for spreading the word and educating people about this virus and how it is spread.

AIDS stands for aquired immuneodeficiency syndrome also known as HIV which is the virus that causes the AIDS virus. Also anyone can get it and sadly yes even babies are born with it to moms who are infected with the disease. It comes from having relations with someone who is infected, tainted blood through blood transfusion and this happened to Arthur Ashe who was a tennis great and Ryan White who also suffered from hemophilia.

Hemophilia is a blood clotting disorder where the person having it there blood does not clot. Also there are people from the royal houses of Europe who had it. Queen Victoria and tzar Nicholas II both also had sons born with this problem. Also AIDS is spread through diry needles that are being passed around. This is also a risk for hepititis C which is a liver disease.

AIDS could not be spread through direct touching like holding hands with someone who has this disease. Oh and coming in contact with bodily fluids of someone infected with AIDS is spread this way too especially if you have an open cut on your skin. Also in the earlier days of the pandemic of AIDS lots of people from the LGBTQ+ communities got targeted and this is not right at all. Then came covid. There was an eerily similar situation that I hate repeated itself blaming the Asian community for the spread of covid because of their sheer stupidity. Both of these situations are not right at all whatsoever.

Now I am off my soapbox for now and we can get to the recipe we have come to talk about. Oh and if you feel sick, please go to your doctor or emergency room to go get checked and this is for any type of illness. Do not put it off because if you do it may be too late.

However I had 1 lb or 1 kg of camel meat still in my deep freezer and moved it in to my refridgerator to be used the next day. It was frozen and it had to thaw out Sometimes camel is hard to get a hold of and you may need 1 lb or kg of boneless beef like the rump or brisket for one or veal shoulder even chicken breast that is also boneless for this dish too in place of camel just in case if you can not get it.

This can be done two ways. The way I did it was by washing my meat first and cutting it in to small pieces that is a tiny bit bigger then bite sized. This is called tika which means pieces in Urdu. You can either leave it as it is and I will do a tika version and post the picture here in this post as a side to side comparison. It may or may not be camel meat and again it depends if it is available or not.

My Birthday Present Is A Meat Grinder/ Homemade Raw Keema (Ground Meat) < Look to the left of this arrow on how to grind meat. Actually you can use either a manual meat grinder or a food processor. The choice is yours. Take either the tika or the ground meat and put it inside a medium mixing bowl. Add 1 pinch each of kalounji, cumin seeds, peppercorns, corriander seeds, 2 cloves, 1 dried red chili, add this to the meat. Add 1 pinch each of red chili powder, paprika, turmeric, sumac, 2 sidr leaves, 1 pinch each of ceysus, malissa, 1 bullion cube crushed in mortar and pestle or 3 pinches of bullion powder, 2 cloves of garlic crushed. 1 handful of rice flour for binding agent only, 3 dashes of maggi or knorr aroma, 3 dashes of either wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, 3 tsps of either butter ghee or olive oil on to the meat and mix in by folding method.

Use a grill to grill these. You will need to start up either whatever type of grill you may have. I have both a small charcol grill and an electric one. The highest my electric grill goes to is 5. I have mine on a 4 to preheat and while that is going I take a sheet of aluminum foil and place it on the grill. Mine is a huge George Forman and has a drip try undernieth. I know place the meat on the skewers. Oh btw if you are doing tika, I want to tell you you can omit the rice flour for the tika kabob only. This one that involves the ground meat is another Urdu word called seikh which means skewers.

However the seikh type uses ground meat which must use a rice flour binder. The siekh type is you make like a meatball and then put it on the skewer which is a very easy way and you press the ground meat mixture on to the skewer to elongate it. It means making it long and then place each one on the grill as you go. For the tika type just place the meat on the skewer and place that on the grill too. Cook these for 15 minutes or until it is done. Do not forget to turn them after 5 minute intervals. You do this to keep them from burning.

These spices you can get at any store that sells Middle Eastern groceries and I get my spices at any Indian and Pakistani grocery store too. The meat I buy at the zabiha halal store. If it is Palestinian owned they will have camel meat. If they are out please request it. If not then you have a backup plan. You can enjoy this with imli sherbat, lassi or a carob drink too. These recipes are here in this very blog.

Sugar Free Carob Drink, Lassi, Sugar Free Imli (Tamarind) Ki Sherbat are the links of the recomended drinks and Zatar added with 3 tbs of olive oil to dip your pita bread and kabob in.

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