Sambusaks or Cheese-filled Buttery Pastries

Sambusaks are a traditional cheese-filled buttery pastry popular in Egypt. Filled with crumbly feta cheese, the tender pastry melts in your mouth. Serve them with hot sweet cardamom tea or a completely untraditional glass of wine.

Everybody has a story to tell.  Some tell it with words and some tell it with illustrations.  (And some keep it to themselves, but they still have a story.  I’m sure of it.)  Right after cookbooks, my favorite kind of book is an autobiography.  (And my favorite cookbooks are never straight recipes.  They need some personal stuff too.)  I will read anyone’s autobiography, from Winston Churchill to Tina Fey and Corrie Ten Boom to David Sedaris.  The little old lady down the street?  If she can write well, I will read hers too.  You never know what interesting thing is going on behind closed doors.

An autobiography and its often more colloquial twin sister, the memoir, reach deep into the heart of what makes the author tick.  How we were raised, where we lived, what we were exposed to in childhood:  These are the circumstances that make us who we are.  Without debating the nature vs. nurture argument, even while leaning heavily to one side, a reasonable person would have to admit that neither nature nor nurture can be completely discounted in the formation of young minds.  And we have all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” 

So, along with my love of cookbooks and autobiographies, I have recently developed an appetite for memoirs that share recipes.  The perfect marriage of both my loves.   

And you know what’s dangerous?  Buy now with 1-Click:  Kindle books on my iPad.

But yesterday’s purchase was money well spent! (Aren’t they all?)  After all, I am trying to get to know my new home city, right?  It is called Apricots on the Nile, a lovely book by an articulate author, Colette Rossant, and it's all about her childhood centered around the consolation of cooking and food in her grandparents’ home in Cairo’s Garden City, way back in the 1930s and ‘40s.  What a delight it was to read about Cairo in a different age but with traditional recipes I am still seeing today.  I highlighted just about every recipe and can’t wait to try them all.

Sambusaks or Cheese-filled Buttery Pastries

This is an easy recipe that I would have highlighted twice, if Kindle for iPad permitted such a thing.

Ingredients

For the pastry:

1/4 cup or 55g melted butter

1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil

1/4 cup or 60ml hot water

Pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups or 355g flour plus extra for rolling out dough

For the filling:

5 1/2 oz 156g feta cheese

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

1 egg

2 teaspoons baking powder

Black pepper

Method

Put the melted butter, oil and hot water in a bowl with the pinch of salt. 

Add in the flour and mix well.  Knead for a few minutes then wrap in cling film and pop the dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, crumble your feta cheese with a fork or your fingers.  

Add in the Parmesan, freshly ground black pepper, egg and the baking powder.  Mix well.   

The original recipe said to whip it all up in a food processor so that’s what I did with my first batch of filling.  And then I started over.

Runny filling going down the drain!

Just mix it by hand. 

When the 30 minutes waiting time is almost up for the dough, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.   Grease your baking tray or line it with parchment paper.

Get the flour ready, because this dough is pretty soft and sticky.  Cut the dough in half and then cut each half into five equal pieces.

Flour your rolling pin and the counter top.  Shape the piece of dough into a ball and then gentle roll it out into a circle of about 4 inches or 10cm. 

Place about 1 tablespoon of the filling on the circle.  

Fold over and squeeze the air out.  Then press the sides together. 

If you have enough room, roll the edges up slightly and then press with a fork to decorate.  I followed the original instructions and just used the fork to close the joint.  (Check out the update at the end for pictures of this.) Some of my cheese filling melted out so folding the edges over might help prevent that.

Continue until all 10 sambusaks are assembled. 

Bake in your preheated oven about 25 minutes or until they are golden brown.  I was amazed by how light and flakey these were. 

Enjoy!

The salty cheese filling goes great with a glass of red. 

Update and confession:  I really only made four of the 10 sambusaks that day.  Yesterday, I used the remaining dough and filling - and added some thinly sliced ham - and they were just as delicious, if not more so.  I also followed my own suggestion of folding the edges over before crimping with the fork and it worked!

Butterflied Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon

As I mentioned back when I wrote the post about Rosemary Lemon Chicken Stroganoff, this is one of my favorite meals to make for guests.  This is also one of my favorite meals to make when it’s just us.  My original post didn’t include photos of the first recipe since the focus was what to do with the leftovers, so I thought I would document making the rosemary lemon chicken itself as I made it the other night.  Two chickens so we would have leftovers again!  You should do the same.

Ingredients  

2 whole chickens, cleaned and trimmed of extra fat

6 long sprigs fresh rosemary or more to taste. 

2 lemons

2 purple onions

Olive oil

Maldon or other flakey sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Using a sharp knife or kitchen scissors, cut along the backbone of each chicken.

Turn the chicken over and press down on the breast to spread it flat.

Put the chickens into a large freezer bag.

The 2 1/2 gallon Hefty bags work great. (The link says 2.5 Qt. mistakenly.
The jumbo bags are really 2.5 Gallon.  Get your act together, Hefty!) 

Pull the needles off of the sprigs of rosemary and throw them in the bag with the chicken.

Cut your lemons in quarters and pop them into the bag.  Squeeze them from outside so the rinds and juice stay in the bag. 

Cut your purple onions in quarters and add them to the bag.

Sprinkle in the sea salt and black pepper.  Pour in olive oil and then close up the Ziploc and give the whole bag a good mix around.

Try to distribute the lemons and onions farily around and then open the zipper just a little and squeeze out as much air as possible, before closing the zipper again.

Marinate chicken for a couple of hours in the refrigerator, or overnight—even a couple of days.  (Or freeze it.  Just make sure to thaw and bring the chicken to room temperature before roasting.)

Preheat oven to 425°F or 220°C.  Once the chicken is at room temperature, dump the whole bag out into a baking pan which has been drizzled with a little olive oil.

Redistribute the lemon and onions pieces around the chicken and put some of the rosemary on top.  Drizzle the chicken liberally with more olive oil.

Roast for 45 minutes.  Serve with bits of onion and even lemon, if your fellow eaters are willing.  My mother-in-law is the only person I know who will eat the roasted lemons but there are surely more people in the world who would and I just haven’t met them.  Anyhow, they look pretty on the plate. 

I serve this with couscous and use all the lovely lemony drippings off the chicken to further moisten the couscous on the plate. 

Enjoy!

N.B. This recipe was created by Nigella Lawson. The original can be found in this book and you should buy one because it is full of wonderful recipes, written by one of my food heroes. 

Cantaloupe with Salami and Feta

Have you ever seen a cantaloupe the size of an apple?  Neither had I until just a week or two ago.  They are in season here in Egypt, or at least, I assume they are in season because, suddenly, they are everywhere and cheap.  I pick them up in the stores and surreptitiously give their stem ends a sniff, because ripe cantaloupes smell of cantaloupe.  Unripe ones smell of nothing.  I finally found a good one and brought it home.  Much to my surprise, it was green inside.  But the flavor, like the smell, is unmistakably cantaloupe, just like the sign said.

The plan:  An appetizer for our anniversary meal because the tiny cantaloupe is perfect for two people.

Ingredients

1 small cantaloupe or 1/4 of a regular one - any color works!

1/4 small purple onion

6 slices Italian salami

3 oz or 85g Feta cheese

1-1 1/2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

Sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Slice your onion very thinly and cover with the vinegar.  This takes the sharpness out of the onion, still leaving the lovely oniony flavor.

Cut your cantaloupe in half and then into wedges.  Scoop out the seeds and discard.  Using a sharp knife, cut the melon from the peel. 

Slice your salami diagonally and arrange about the salad plate. 

Cut your feta into small squares or crumble with a fork.   

Put the cantaloupe on the plates with the salami and scatter the feta over the salami and cantaloupe.

Add the olive oil and sprinkle of sea salt a couple of good grinds of fresh black pepper to the onion and mix well.   Drizzle this all over the cantaloupe, salami and cheese. 

Make sure you get a bit of everything in each bite you take: salami, cantaloupe, feta and onion.   The sweet melon is divinely offset by the rich salami and salty feta with the balsamic onion dressing.

Enjoy!

Update:  Maybe the season is short, because the pile in Carrefour today was much diminished.  They are still 5.95 Egyptian pounds per kilo (about US$1, so less than 50 cents a pound.)

What's left, nestled amongst the coconuts.