Recipe: Mini lamb koftas, cucumber lemon yoghurt dip

Tasty lamb skewers with mozzarella. Photo / Michael Craig

Makes 30 skewers

These are gluten-free and will be vego-friendly if you omit the lamb and add more cheese.

6 lamb merguez sausages
3 red peppers
200g of feta or mozzarella
mint leaves, lemon, cucumber and plain yoghurt

1 Remove the casing from the sausages and divide each by 5. Roll the sausage meat into balls (wet hands help). Place these on a baking tray lined with tin foil or baking paper.

2 Cut the peppers in half lengthways, remove the seeds and sit skin-side up on another baking tray. Give the meat balls and peppers a little spray with oil. Put both into a preheated moderate oven. In 5-10 minutes the sausage balls will be cooked. Remove and set aside. The peppers are ready to remove when the skin is blistering. Once this happens, remove from the oven and cover with a tea towel to cool.

3 Grate about a cup of cucumber and drain in a colander.

4 Zest and juice a lemon. Mix the drained cucumber with the lemon zest, juice and 2 cups of yoghurt.

5 Sit a paper towel in the colander and tip this mix into it to allow the dip to drain a bit more and thicken.

6 By now the pepper skins should easily slip off the peppers. Dice the peppers and feta or mozzarella, and sprig the mint into leaves.

7 Thread a piece of pepper, a mint leaf, a sausage ball and a piece of cheese on to your skewers. Put your drained dip in a bowl and serve.

Hint: Mozzarella stays intact and is easier to thread than feta.