Iraqi-Kurdish kubbeh (beef or vegan stuffed dumplings) in beet soup (plus video)

DIRECTIONS

• Start with the filling
• Salt and pepper beef chuck on both sides. Put a small saucepan on medium-high heat, add oil, and sear chuck on both sides for about 6 minutes. Add water just to cover, then add garlic cloves around the chuck. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low, cover pot and cook for 2 ½ hours, or until beef is very tender and falling apart. You can do that a day ahead.
• Pull the beef chuck apart or use a knife to chop it. Put in a medium bowl, squeeze cooked garlic cloves out of their skin and add to beef, together with cilantro, Minch and nutmeg. Mix and adjust salt to taste. Set aside.
• For the vegan filling, simply mix all the ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside.
• Make the shell
• Put bulgar in a fine sieve and wash with water for 60 seconds. Put in a bowl of a stand mixer or a large bowl, add 1½ cups water and salt, mix, cover bowl with towel and set aside for 15 minutes for the bulgar to absorb the water.
• After 15 minutes, add farina. Mix in a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook for 5 minutes, scrapping the sides of the bowl as needed, to create a soft dough. If it seems too dry, add a little water, if it’s too watery, add a little more farina. Cover bowl with towel and set aside.
• Start making the soup
• Separate green parts of beet leaves of Swiss chard from their stalks. Finely slice stalk, set aside. Slice green parts and keep them separately. Peel and half beets, then slice into thin slices.
• In a large, preferably wide pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, leave stalks and sauté for 5 minutes. Add sliced beets, tomato paste and garlic and cook for another 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Add greens to pot together with stock, lemon juice, mint, sugar, salt. Bring to boil, then lower heat, cover pot and continue to cook as you make the kubbeh.
• Spray a baking sheet with oil. Fill a small bowl with water and put it next to the dough mixture and the filling.
• Wet your hands and spoon a 1.5” ball of dough into your palm. Flatten the dough in your hand, then put a spoonful of the filling inside. Using your other hand, pinch the dough around the filling to completely cover it, roll the covered meatball in your hands to make sure it’s round and not ripped (you can close any hole in the dough by adding a little more dough from the bowl). Then flatten the ball into a disk and put on the greased baking sheet. Repeat with four more kubbeh.
• Taste soup and adjust salt and lemon juice. Increase heat to medium and gently add 5 kubbeh into the soup, make sure they do not touch each other. Keep soup on low simmer as you prepare the rest of the kubbeh, 5 at a time, and adding to the soup.
• When all kubbeh are in the soup, cover pot and lower the heat and cook on low simmer for 40 minutes, shaking pot occasionally, to prevent from kubbeh to get stuck to one another.
• Serve in large bowls with a drizzle of olive oil.