If you’re into grazing and love mediterranean flavours, then you’ll enjoy serving up a mezze platter at your next dinner party.

It’s hard to go wrong with a well assembled party platter. What makes this particularly delightful is the range of colours, textures, and flavour combinations you can pull together to switch things up and adapt to your liking and needs.

Mezze platters are typically served up as an appetizer. But with the addition of spiced couscous, lamb koftas, and refreshing fattoush salad, we think this spread makes for a fantastic main course to enjoy with your dinner companions.

Lamb Koftas

Koftas are skewers of meat made out of ground beef or lamb, thoroughly flavoured with spices and herbs. Famous in middle eastern cuisines koftas are usually grilled on a BBQ.

Koftas can also add some great variety to your next BBQ platter. Give it a try!

Fattoush Salad

Fattoush is a salad famous in middle eastern cuisines. This recipe calls for a variety of produce making it a refreshing and wholesome salad that can be a meal on its own or used as a salad to accompany a main dish.

The star of the fattoush salad is the pomegranate molasses dressing. Pomegranate molasses is made by boiling pomegranate juice, and is easy to find at your local middle eastern store. The balance of sweet and sour notes in pomegranate molasses makes this a perfect candidate for a dressing.

We topped off the salad with grilled halloumi cheese, which is best served fresh off the grill.

Other Suggested Additions

You can customize your platter with a number of homemade or store bought sides. Here are a few ideas to inspire your next spread:

• Hummus, baba ganoush, or zhug (pictured here)
• Za’atar bread (pictured here) or pita bread
• Dolmas (pictured here), or olives
• Marinated feta, or grilled halloumi cheese (pictured here)
• Fresh veggies and herbs

Mezze Platter with Lamb Kofta and Fattoush Salad

Recipe by buildorbakeCourse: Appetizers, DinnerCuisine: MediterraneanDifficulty: Medium

Servings

4

servings

If you’re into grazing and love mediterranean flavours, then you’ll enjoy serving up a mezze platter at your next dinner party. Mezze platters are typically served up as an appetizer. But with the addition of lamb koftas, and refreshing fattoush salad, this spread makes for a fantastic main course to enjoy with your dinner companions.

Ingredients

• Lamb Koftas

• 2 pounds ground lamb

• 2 bunches of parsley

• 2 red bell peppers

• 1 large red onion

• 1 head of garlic

• 4 tsps of kofta spice mix (or 7 spice mix)

• 2 tsp salt

• 2 tsp pepper (freshly ground)

• 1 tsp smoked paprika

• Juice of one lemon

• 1 cup breadcrumbs

• 1 egg

• Salad Dressing

• 1 tbsp ground sumac

• 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
  

• 4 tbsp olive oil
  

• 1 tsp dijon mustard
  

• 1 clove garlic (grated)
  

• Salt and pepper to taste
  

• Fattoush Salad with Grilled Halloumi

• 1 head of romaine lettuce
  

• 1 large cucumber
  

• 1 large red onion 
  

• 1 large bell pepper
  

• 1 bunch of fresh mint
  

• Small pack of cherry tomatoes
  

• Small pack of radishes (5-10)
  

• Small block of halloumi cheese
  

Directions

• Lamb Koftas
• Chop onion, garlic, pepper and parsley.
• In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients and spices together. 
  Using your hands, mix thoroughly until all ingredients are well incorporated.
  
• Let the meat marinade in the fridge for at least 2 hours (preferably overnight)
• Separate the meat into tennis ball sized portions. To make the koftas, take a metal screwer and pierce it through one of the meat balls. While holding the screw in one hand, use your other hand to slowly squeeze the meat along the skewer, forming an even layer of meat. Using this technique, form the rest of the koftas.
  
• Grill on the BBQ for 20-30 mins until cooked.
• Fattoush Salad with Grilled Halloumi
• In a small bowl (or a mason jar), add all the salad dressing ingredients together and mix thoroughly.
• Prepare the vegetables: chop the lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and onion. Thinly slice all the radishes. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half. Pick the mint leaves from the bunches.
  
  
• In a large bowl mix all the produce together.
  
• Slice the Halloumi into ¼ inch pieces and grill on the BBQ until you see some good grill marks on both sides.
• Mix the salad dressing in with the chopped produce until well combined.
• Serve salad topped with grilled halloumi.

Notes

• You will need metal BBQ skewers, or bamboo skewers that have soaked in water for a couple of hours.