Recipes for a Middle Eastern Feast: Beef Phyllo Rolls (Burak bi Lahm)

Family reunions are a feature of American life. When families are spread out all over our nation (a five day drive coast to coast), it prevents regular family time except for that glorious day (or week) during the summer or during the holidays when everyone gathers to catch up, show off the grand kids, and eat copious amounts of food.  Even if most of your family lives within a two hour drive of Grandma's house, family get-togethers are a treat--a time for remembering and sharing and passing down things that shouldn't be forgotten.  It's a time for heritage.

Food is part of that heritage.  The Mattson family reunions of my youth seemed to feature typical American fare dotted with the occasional traditional dish from the Swedish/Welsh heritage we all shared.  Hoagies, tuna salad, and egg salad sandwiches would be piled on plates and set down on one end of a picnic table along with the bucket of KFC chicken that someone who had just flown in that morning had picked up on the way over to the park.  There were jello salads and green salads, fruit salads and pasta salads.  And then there were the obligatory bowls of something that I have dubbed the Mattson Potato Salad--the magical concoction that no one had a recipe for but somehow could be produced identically by at least four of the aunties and adult cousins besides my mother.  It wasn't a real reunion without it. 

Similarly, it wasn't a real Solomon family reunion without a big bowl of Tabbouleh sitting next to the pile of hamburger patties that one of the uncles had been grilling.