Grilled kafta skewers

Place the ground beef in a wide bowl, add cumin, sumac, cinnamon, black pepper, salt. Knead with both hands eight minutes until the mixture turns pale and tacky, this gives the bind.

Cover and rest in the fridge thirty minutes. The cold firms the fat, the flavours marry. Skewers shaped from cold meat hold their cylinder on the grill.

Light a charcoal grill or heat a heavy cast-iron griddle over highest heat ten minutes. The surface must be smoking, ready to give an instant crust.

Wet your hands. Take two hundred grams of mixture, press around a flat metal skewer to form a long sausage of two centimetres thick. Pinch ridges every three centimetres for grip.

Brush the grill with ghee. Lay the skewers down, grill three minutes per side without moving so the crust forms. Total cooking six minutes for a juicy interior.

Let the skewers rest two minutes off the heat. Slide off the meat onto warm whole bread or rice. A pinch of extra sumac at the end lifts the aroma.