Harissa beef pitas, tray to table
Raw beef goes into the sauce and the oven does the rest. No browning, no pan.
At a Glance
Story
Ground beef does not need browning when it is going to bake in a wet sauce. Torn into the tomato and harissa raw, it sets in pieces and holds its juice, and the surface that sits proud of the sauce browns anyway under the oven's top heat. Brown it in a pan first and you have squeezed it dry for a colour the oven was going to give you for nothing.
Ingredients
- 10 oz ground beef
- 1 × 8 oz can tomato sauce
- 1 ½ tbsp harissa paste
- 2 tbsp dried currants
- 1 oz roasted red pepperssliced
- ½ tbsp za'atar
- 2 pocketless pitas or flatbreads
- ½ cup tzatzikishop-bought is fine here
- 1 ½ oz fetacrumbled
- mint leavestorn, to finish
- olive oilsalt, pepper
Method
Five minutes of assembly, then twenty of leaving it alone. This is the one for the evening you walk in the door with nothing left.
- Oven to 450°F. In a small roasting tray, stir together the tomato sauce, harissa, currants, red peppers and half the za'atar. Season well.
- Tear the beef into bite-size pieces and lay them over the sauce in one layer. Season. Bake uncovered 12 to 14 minutes, until the beef is cooked through. Stir it together when it comes out.
- Meanwhile, put the pitas on a sheet of foil, drizzle with olive oil and scatter the rest of the za'atar. Stack, wrap in the foil and put the parcel straight onto an oven rack for 5 to 7 minutes.
- Unwrap carefully, the steam is genuine. Serve the tray as it is, with the pitas, the tzatziki, the feta and a lot of torn mint.
Tear, scoop, repeat. Cutlery is available but nobody has ever asked for it.
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