Some Good Pomes for my birthday. I listened to them while nibbling on leftover Kibbe Suniyeh i.e. Kibbe in Pan. Kibbe was constructed out of a beautiful filet (Halal) purchased at Babylon Market in Tucson (boy did I pay alot for this hunk of fresh beef). This was a truly beautiful piece of meat. This is ground into a near puree and combined with Kibbe Base. Kibbe Base is made by grinding an onion, several radishes, a hot pepper (any type) and a sweet pepper plus some fine bulghur with a liberal couple of spoons of ground "camooni" which is a conconction of cumin, allspice, mint, rosehips, cardommon, cinnamon bark, black peppercorns...and some other stuff actually. So, this is mushed up into a giant blob of raw meat with wheat and spices and all of that stuff......you have to eat some of that raw too while preparing the dish (called Kibbe Naye at that stage and it is oh so delicious)....so then you fry up some ground meat (preferably halal) with some onions, hot pepper, sweet pepper in olive oil and season it with cinnamon and allspice and salt....so this is placed between two layers of the Kibbe (from filet and patted into adobe like layers) and you bake it for 20 minutes or so....helps to brush some olive oil on top of the whole mess. So...it's pretty good the day you make it but the real treat is to eat it COLD the next day. Oh and I forgot..throw in some pine nuts when you fry the ground meat....this is really important. Also put some pine nuts on top of the whole thing...slash diamond like cuts across the top and place one or two nuts in each diamond so it looks like the real deal.

Goes great with some nice hot coffee (perc'd in an old Pyrex stovetop) and some Jim Pomes. Nice start to a birthday if you ask me.

JIM BEHRLE FOR POETEEVEE from Alex Abelson on Vimeo.