Baked mince with rice, mint, garlic and pine nuts.

There was a time when one 500 gram pack of lean mince would last a couple of meals. Then the children grew, and the appetites grew, and the food shrank. That’s how it seems. It literally shrinks, metaphorically.  (Teenage language is fascinating: they use ‘literally’ only when they mean ‘metaphorically’. I am literally starving. You are literally a retard.)

Now we’re using a kilogram of meat at a sitting. Yesterday I made a baked meat and rice slice that seemed to go down well; you can tell by the response. If it’s ‘yes, that was nice but don’t make it again’ you know it’s doomed; if it’s ‘more-please’; one getting in before the others, then it’s a hit. 

Its closest comparison might be that Lebanese baked meat tray thing with bulgur wheat, but this was only a third cousin or maybe just a neighbour.

I cooked half a cup of rice until almost done and drained it. Meanwhile, I halved a kilogram of beef mince; and one half I combined with the rice, a lot of chopped parsley and mint, a lot of pepper and salt and garlic, and a shake of cumin and garlic. The other half I just folded through with two eggs and salt and pepper until unctuously combined. I lined a baking dish with half of the meat and egg mixture, tamping down gently to form an even flat platform, and then the layer of meat and rice mixture over that, sprinkling it with a scattering of pine nuts; and then the other half of meat and egg. All gently patted down to make a nice flattish cake of spicy meaty hunger-busting goodness. I scored the top into a diamond pattern. Once baked - 50 minutes - I threw it under the griller to crisp the top for a few minutes, cut it into slices along the scoring, and served it wrapped with fresh flat bread, crisp lettuce, truss tomato, yogurt mixed with cucumber and a dash of chili sauce.