Beef Kofte with Sumac Onions and Warm Pita

Method

1. Work the ground beef with the ground cumin, the black pepper, the salt and half the parsley, folding it against the side of the bowl over and over until it stops crumbling and turns tacky enough to smear.
2. Wet your hands and press the meat into four fingers about as thick as your thumb, squeezing along the length of each one so it grips itself rather than slumping apart over the heat.
3. Lay the fingers on a plate and put them in the fridge for ten minutes. The fat has to go firm again before they meet the pan; worked warm and cooked straight away, they spread flat.
4. While the kofte firm up, cut the red onion into the thinnest half-moons your knife will give you, strew the sumac over them and squeeze the lemon quarter on top, then work the slices between your fingers until they go limp and stain pink.
5. Dice the tomato small and turn it through the onions with the parsley you held back.
6. Crush the garlic clove flat under the blade and chop it down to a paste, then beat it into the Greek yoghurt with a spoonful of cold water until the sauce falls off the spoon instead of sitting on it.
7. Set the kofte down in a heavy dry pan over a medium-high flame and leave them four minutes without touching them, then roll them a quarter turn at a time across the next seven, until no juice runs pink when you press one.
8. Move them to a warm plate and leave them two minutes. They carry on cooking on their own heat, and the juice you worked into the meat settles back in rather than running out at the first bite.
9. While the kofte settle, sit the pita on a bare pan over a low flame for a minute a side. It wants to swell and steam rather than colour; toast it stiff and it will crack down the fold at the first grab.
10. Bring the kofte, the sumac onions, the garlic yoghurt and the hot pita to the table together and build every mouthful yourself: tear a piece of bread, load it, eat it, go again.