In any event, one of my favorite things besides his books is his videos on the New York Times website.  Most of them are under five minutes and have some inventive ideas.  These nachos are lifted off of his rant on bar nachos with their orange cheese sauce and soggy chips.  I definitely agree with him.

These Greek nachos are piled high with ground lamb, a feta cheese sauce and tons of toppings, so they lose none of the flavor.  Even my traditional nacho-loving fiancee didn’t have a problem polishing off a plate of these.

Different and delicious

I’ve written about nachos before on Macheesmo.  I did the near perfect nachos which in my opinion is the only way to make traditional nachos.  Then I made some fish nachos over the summer which had some awesome flavor.  Greek nachos are a departure from both of those things, but equally tasty.

Greek Nachos (adapted from a Bittman Video)
Serves 4

- 12-16 pitas, cut into eights.  I like making extra chips for snacking later
- 1 1/2 pounds ground lamb
- 1 Teaspoon cumin
- Olive oil, for drizzling on chips
- Salt for chips

Feta Sauce:
- 1 Container (17.6 ounces) Greek yogurt
- 1 to 1 1/2 Cups Feta Cheese
- 1 Lemon, juice and zest
- 3 Tablespoons fresh mint
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil

Toppings: (These are what I used, but go crazy)
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 1/4 Cup sun-dried tomatoes, diced
- 1/2 Cup feta, crumbled
- 1/4 Cup kalamata olives, diced
- 1/2 red onion, sliced
- 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
- 2 jalapenos, de-seeded and diced

Helpful Equipment:
- Blender
- Microplane (for zesting)

Making the Sauce. The thing that differentiates this dish from normal nachos more than anything is the sauce.  Instead of a gloopy, orange sauce, this sauce is actually cold and stays a perfect consistency no matter what.  It’s also very flavorful and pairs perfectly with lamb and pita.

You’ll need this stuff:

Good ingredients on their own.

Basically, just stick all your ingredients in a blender and give it a whirl.  Be sure to get the zest off your lemon before you juice it.  I like to use a microplane for this.  It’s a bit easier that way.  The zest adds a lot of fresh flavor to the sauce to counter the sharpness of the feta and yogurt.

Say no to cruddy orange sauce!

I like to drizzle a bit of olive oil over the sauce when it’s done, but you can also just mix the olive oil straight in.  The recipe above makes a lot of sauce and we didn’t come close to using all of it for 4 plates of nachos, but it was great over the next few days on pita bread with some hummus.

Olive oil adds another level of flavor.

Making the Chips. I didn’t photograph this, but for this recipe all I did was cut the pita into eights.  Don’t peel apart the two sides of the pita.  Leave them whole which will make a thicker chip that will hold up better to loads of toppings.

Put your pitas on a baking sheet and drizzle them with some olive oil and a pinch of salt.  Bake them at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes, stirring them once or twice while they are cooking.  The chips may not become completely crisp, but they should be mostly crisp.  I wouldn’t recommend doing these too far in advance as it’s kind of nice to have warm chips.

Other Toppings. While your pita chips are cooking, you’ll have plenty of chopping to do.  I didn’t take any photos of this because chopping is kind of boring, but here’s the master shot of the whole spread.  I just put everything in bowls and then people could pick and choose their toppings.  Again, any leftovers make a great pita sandwich the next day.

Get it?

Cooking the Lamb.  Cooking ground lamb is just like cooking ground beef although sometimes lamb can be a bit fattier.  So you may need to drain off some grease while it cooks.  In any event, just throw the lamb in a skillet with a pinch of salt and some cumin and let it cook for about 20 minutes.  Stir it a few times and let it brown really nicely.

Making the nachos. The nachos are pretty easy to make once you get all the pieces made.  Start with a good layer of chips, then add the lamb and a few spoonfuls of sauce.

Lamb plus cheese sauce

I put a heaping amount of every topping on my nachos.  Some friends who I invited over picked which toppings they liked the best.  It looked like the sun-dried tomatoes were a big hit and the jalapenos gave some needed spice to the dish in my opinion.

But yea, the end result was delicious.

Toppings galore!

I had a lot of leftovers from this meal and it wasn’t a problem at all. I ate them all weekend and it was awesome.  You could decrease the amount of toppings I gave in the recipe if you wanted to cut it close (the lamb and chips were about perfect though).

Anyway, props definitely go to Mr. Bittman for this idea.  It was a huge success in my book.  It makes up for the recipe I saw him make on the Today Show a few days ago:  Chicken Pot Pie without the Crust.  That idea sounds about as good as apple pie without the crust.  Why bother?!

Anyway, I’m getting off topic.  The point is that these nachos rocked.

These were our ingredients for this battle: Leeks and Lamb

The ingredients of choice.

So, once again, and I know this because we ate them together, I managed to make almost the exact same dish as my competitor.  We both went for a lamb burger slider.  This was the basic recipe I used:

Lamb Burger Sliders

- 2 pounds ground lamb
- 6 ounces feta
- 2-3 Tablespoons of rosemary and parsley, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- Salt and Pepper
- A few glugs of beer (I probably used about half of a beer).  This keeps the burger nice and moist.

Now you could stuff the feta into the center of each burger, but I like to mix the feta in.  That way as the feta melts, it provides extra moisture to every bite.

Adding feta makes it salty and juicy.

I also wanted to add a bunch of herbs to this burger.  But let’s talk about one herb I wanted to add, but couldn’t find anywhere:  MINT.  I have two theories why I couldn’t find it in any of the three stores I checked:  1) Pete knew I was making burgers and tried to spite me by buying up all the mint in the entire Metro area or 2) We happened to be making these dishes on Kentucky Derby weekend. (Mint juleps anyone?)

Anyway, I did my best.

Adding other stuff except no mint!

I formed these into perfect 4 ounce patties because I like my mini-burgers (sliders) to be about half as large as a normal burger.  Any smaller than that and I find that they get a bit dry.  4 ounces is perfect though.

For me, mini equals 4 ounces.

Since I was just making burgers, I thought I would kick it up a notch by making my own buns.  I must say that these turned out fantastic and were possibly the best part of my dish.  The recipe which I got courtesy of the Wild Yeast Blog, was pretty intense.  It requires a preferment batch of dough and some interesting ingredients (molasses), but it is all worth it.  They turned out beautifully.

Sweet buns, dude.

Now lets talk about the leeks.  I had two things I wanted to do with these guys.  First, I wanted to make some caramelized leeks to put on the burgers.  Anytime you caramelize something, you need a lot of it.  I used six leeks and cut them into fairly uniform matchsticks.

This was like 6 leeks.

I sauteed these for about twenty minutes on medium heat in a few tablespoons of olive oil until most were browned nicely.  Leeks don’t have as much liquid as onions and they don’t caramelize quite the same.  They will burn easily if you take your eye off them.

Caramelizing and frying!

See the pot in the back?  That’s filled with canola oil.  I also had the idea to split up a leek and make a blooming leek!  I’m sure most people have tried the awesome blooming onion appetizer that when deep-frired, opens like a flower.  Then you can break off each delicious fried section.

I thought it might be possible to split a leek open so that it opens in the same way.

For the batter for this, I used a traditional beer batter:

Buttermilk Beer Batter

- 2 Cups Flour
- 1.5 Cups buttermilk
- 1.5 Cups beer (I used an IPA because that is what I happened to have.)
- Big pinch of salt
- Lemon zest (optional)

A good batter will most likely have both of these.

For the blooming leek I sliced it vertically into eighths, hoping it would kind of peel open.   I also left a large section of green on it, which made it super easy to dip into the oil.

Blooming leek!

I was expecting this to be a pretty big FAIL, and it didn’t “bloom” perfectly, but it tasted okay.  Tasted like fried leek which tastes pretty darn good.  To serve it I cut off the green stem and people just kind of peeled off parts, like they would the onion variety.

Turned out okay!

But let’s get down to business: The burgers.  We both decided to make burgers and they were both stellar.  Here is something you don’t get to see often on food blog battles: an actual side by side photo of the two dishes:

Tough call.

I should also mention that Pete’s Lamb in a Slanket where really inventive and amazing.  They were a really cool appetizer.  No doubt about it.  I didn’t take a photo of them, but I’m sure he has a few photos of them up on his post which you should obviously check out.

This battle was the exact reason why I wanted to start doing this.  It was awesome to get to meet someone else who likes cooking and food as much as I do.  We had a few beers and a few burgers and it was a great time.

So check out Pete’s post, and obviously, vote for your favorite!

Also, the polls close at noon EST tomorrow (Wednesday).