Preparation and Cooking of Version 1: Dry Kebab

• Pack the desirable quantity of young goat or lamb meat inside a meat net, each pack should be about 0.5kg weight and slightly salted. Then pile up the meat packs inside a cooking utensil that should have a grit at the bottom.
• To increase the moisture level hence to prevent excesive dryness of the meat, two cups of water should be placed inside the wood fired oven.
• Closed the oven door under the slow cooking mode (no active fire and at around 100-150^oC) and cook the meat for 3-4 hours.
• The final dish is sautéed meat style that is fat free dish as the meat fat collects at the bottom of the grit.
• The locals serve the cooked meat with pickles (cabbage, green beans, carrot) and/or green salad, and with the local drinks zivania (or zivana) that is a Cypriot pomace brandy.

Version 2: Lamb Kleftiko

Note that the meat in Version 1 is deliberately cooked the way to be dry! If soft and juicy meat is preferred, the meat can be cooked with other ingredients after wrapping inside a cooking paper (or leaf) that is wrapped by an aluminium foil. The meat texture that defines a well cooked Lamb Kleftiko is when the meat is falling off the bone after slow cooking.

Ingredients

One lamb shoulder (about 2 kg), 1/2 cup of olive oil, 4 medium size tomato, 1 kg onion (roughly chopped), 1 kg waxy potatoes, 2 lemons, 1-2 heads of garlic, 1 medium size red capsicum; 1tsp of dried oregano; 1tsp of cinnamon; 1tsp of salt; 1 bay leaf; and 2tbsp of lemon juice (to help to cut through the richness of the meat and potatoes).

Preparation and Cooking

• Season the meat using oregano, cinnamon, salt, bay leaf and lemon juice. Then place it in the middle of a sufficiently large cooking tray and rub the shoulder with olive oil and add seasonings and rub again.
• Cut the onions and tomatoes into wedges, capcicums into chunky strips (after removing the seeds), cut the lemons and garlics into pieces and with the bay leaf distribute around the shoulder meat.
• Add about a cup of water to the cooking tray and tightly seal it with aluminium foils, and place it inside the wood fired oven and cook it under slow cooking mode (no active fire, door closed) for 5-7 hours at 120-140^o
• If crachy texture is preferred on the outside the lamb shoulder, after refiring the oven and removing the foil , it can be roasted for 5 min under radiated heat (while watching the level of roasting preferred!).
• Kleftiko is ready for serving as a side dish or as topping in a number of main dishes.

Hints and Comments

• Thief Kebab is widely known in Cyprus Island and probably the mother of Kleftiko. It seems that the name Kleftiko is also associated to the Klephts in Greek, a group of bandits. Thief Kebab is originally cooked in a fire pit (also known as earth oven, ground oven, cooking pit or pit oven), or inside a small cave. The fire pit is heated for about 3 hours and lamb or goat meat is cooked about 3 hours.

In the traditional cooking, the cooking setting of the meat is prepared in the following order: The fire is covered by wetted green shinno leaves, then the large pieces of the meats are distributed over these leaves, which is then covered by a second layer using wetted green carob leaves; Finally, large/flat stones are added, and the stones are covered by mud and dry soil to prevent heat dissipation, to keep the meat moist as well as to hide the fire pit and its contents !

Photo: Thief Kebab is traditionally cooked a “Pit Oven or pithos oven (with wide opening) as it is illustrated on the left. Note that the locals cook sheep head together with the kebab as it can be seen inside the oven.