i don't know how the other bloggers do it. between looking after the kids, the local scout troop, delivering meals on wheels and my 3 golden retrievers, i sometimes find it difficult to get time to write up my blogs. ok, i don't have the kids, scouts, wheels or even the dogs, but i am finding myself being weighed down by a few blogs that are queuing up to be written and posted. as a result, this is gonna be a little brief and to the point ...
cooking from the raunchily named "tarts with tops on" (originally from claudia roden's "the book of jewish cooking"), today we prepared some lamb phyllo pastries.
ingredients: minced lamb for 2, tomato, courgette, onion 1/2, pinenuts, all spice, cinnamon, phyllo pastry, butter, salt, pepper
brown the lamb whilst cutting the vegetables finely (dice). note: today i learnt the difference, much to my chagrin, between slicing and dicing ... dicing is cutting small and slicing is in cutting circles (more or less). when browned, remove the lamb into a bowl. add the tomato, courgette and onion to make a sufrito. add spice, cinnamon, salt and pepper to flavour. there was a minor breakthrough today in that i did know that the sufrito was under flavoured ... i'm learning. put the mince back in and mix / flavour. leave the mixture to cool. it is incredible, but this smell triggered a complete food memory for me ~ shwarma. the pastry has strong greek and middle eastern tradition so there could be something in that ...
sufrito ... with spoon and minced lamb
today was the first time for me to use phyllo pastry as part of the course. we cheated and used premade, but i promise to add to my shortcrust science lesson and make some phyllo very soon. what i do know about it; it is the greek for leaf and can be spelt as phyllo (basically any cookbook ensuring that you can't find it) or filo (any premade pastry ensuring that you can't find them). a trick that blanca taught me; wrap the filo in a towel while you are not using it in order to ensure that it does not dry out.
preheat the oven to 170c. when you're ready to eat, cut a square (note, this is an unorthodox technique ~ you may be better following below) of the phyllo. brush melted butter to the edges of the pastry. place the mixture and fold around. at this point it is best not to have a specific shape in mind ... start folding, then become painfully aware that you are holding the equivalent of pastry gold in your hands that can rip and dry out literally any second. start to panic and just wrap the pastry in whatever shape that it will go into that will not send diners running for miles ...
cook for approx 8 minutes until golden brown and serve to horrified guests.
on take 2 we consulted the web: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~barman/filo.html. thank you dilip - your masterful photos and drawings saved my dinner and probably mean that i will persevere into writing a blog another day ... follow the ribbon, fold technique to produce good looking triangle shaped pastries.
ribbon of pastry with lamb ready for rolling ...
as it happens, not only did i buy premade pastry, but i also bought pastry that has pictures on the back of the carton of how to fold the triangles ... you can bring a cook to water, but you can't make him fold proper triangles ...
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