Cut the bread into small circles using a round cutter or any round-shaped bowl. If you don’t have a cutter, use a knife, as I did.
Place each bread circle inside the muffin pan.
You have two options: deep-fry the cups or bake them.
For baked cups: Brush the bread with olive oil and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F until golden, which takes about 20 minutes.
For deep-fried cups: Bake the bread for 5 minutes to dry it out and help it hold the cup shape. Then, remove it from the oven and deep-fry in hot oil for about 20 seconds. I fry six cups at a time and make sure to spoon oil inside each cup to cook the inside evenly.
Place the deep-fried bread on a tray with a mesh liner to cool.
While the bread is cooling, prepare the fillings and yogurt sauce.
Yogurt Sauce: Mix all the yogurt sauce ingredients together.
Ground Beef: Cook the ground beef with olive oil and spices.
Shrimp: Cook the shrimp until pink.
Chicken: Cook the chicken, shred it, and mix with sumac and olive oil, or serve it plain.
Eggplant (optional): Cut into cubes, then deep-fry or air-fry until golden.
Each filling recipe mentioned is enough for 12 cups. You can make one kind or all three, but be sure to prepare more cups and extra yogurt sauce if needed.
On a large serving tray, arrange bowls filled with the chicken, meat, shrimp, chickpeas, cooked eggplant, nuts, yogurt sauce, and the bread cups.
To assemble, you can either prepare the Fatteh cups by adding chickpeas, a meat filling, yogurt sauce, and toppings like nuts, pomegranate seeds, and parsley, or place everything on the table and let everyone assemble their own cups.