Picadillo meets the Middle East

I absolutely love Cuban picadillo. It's a completely simple meal of ground beef seasoned well, with olives and raisins being the most characteristic ingredients. Usually, it's served over rice, and with some nice fried plaintains... yum! You see, I love the combination of sweet and salt in food, and the raisins with olives and seasoned beef, plus sweet, sticky plaintains, make me want to melt. But, I think that this is not part of the taste preference of all cultures, and certainly not of all people. My Israeli boyfriend is on the other end of the spectrum with the salty sweet combo. In his head, salt never even sits on the same plate as sweet. So, meat and raisins were not going to get eaten by anyone except me in this crowd. But, I badly wanted picadillo, or something similar.
In the end, I made a version without raisins, spiced it up even further, kept lots of olives and then made it a little middle eastern by topping with fresh yoghurt (from the lebanese deli around the corner) and lemon.
For any interested vegetarians (hint, hint) I think this would work equally well with veggie crumbles.


Middle Eastern Picadillo

1 pound ground beef (or veggie crumbles)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, diced
4 roma tomatoes, chopped
4 tablespoons chopped green olives
1 jalapeno, deseeded and chopped
2 tsp steak seasoning
1 tsp dried thyme
salt
canola oil

2 tbsp fresh yoghurt per serving
1 lemon, cut into wedges

Heat oil in medium saucepan. Saute onions until soft and then add garlic and jalapenos.

Add ground beef with thyme and steak seasoning and begin to brown. Once mostly brown, add tomatoes (with all seeds) and olives. Cover and let simmer until tomatoes are soft.

Serve warm over rice with a couple dollops of fresh yoghurt and a lemon wedge to squeeze over the top.

Pretty easy and yummy.