Sambousek Bil Lahm
A Saudi meat sambousek: crescent-shaped pastries with a spiced lamb mince filling, crimped along the edge and either baked or fried. The iftar mainstay.
Overview
The meat-filled half-moon that sits next to the cheese version on every Levantine-Arabian table. You roll a soft butter-and-yogurt dough thin, stamp it into nine-centimetre rounds, and place a teaspoon of spiced lamb mince in the centre of each. The lamb is fragrant with baharat, onion, toasted pine nuts and a touch of pomegranate molasses that adds a sweet-sharp depth you can't quite place. The rounds fold into half-moons and crimp with a fork. From there they go either route: deep-fried at 170°C for three or four minutes per side, or baked at 200°C for eighteen to twenty minutes with an egg wash for shine. The pastry blisters lightly, the filling stays juicy. Eaten warm with a wedge of lemon, often as part of a meze spread alongside hummus, mutabbal, salata and warm flatbread.
Ingredients
Dough
- 500 g plain flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon caster sugar
- 100 g unsalted butter (softened)
- 3 tablespoons natural yogurt
- 1 egg (large)
- 150 ml warm water
Filling
- 400 g lamb mince
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion (medium, very finely chopped)
- 3 garlic cloves (crushed)
- 1 ½ teaspoons Baharat
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- 40 g pine nuts (toasted)
- 1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley (chopped)
- salt
- pepper
To finish
- 1 egg yolk + 1 tablespoon milk (for egg wash if baking)
- OR 1 litre vegetable oil for deep frying
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional, for baking)
Method
Stage 1 - Dough
- Whisk flour, salt and sugar in a bowl.
- Rub in the butter to fine crumbs.
- Whisk yogurt, egg and warm water; pour in; mix to a soft dough.
- Knead 4-5 minutes until smooth. Cover; rest 30 minutes.
Stage 2 - Filling
- Heat the olive oil in a wide pan over medium heat.
- Brown the lamb hard, breaking up clumps; pour off excess fat.
- Add the onion; cook 5 minutes.
- Stir in garlic, baharat, cinnamon and allspice; cook 1 minute.
- Splash 80 ml of water; simmer 4 minutes until dry.
- Off the heat, stir in pine nuts, pomegranate molasses, parsley, salt and pepper.
- Cool completely.
Stage 3 - Shape
- Roll the dough to 2 mm thick on a lightly floured board.
- Stamp out 9 cm rounds.
- Place 1 teaspoon of filling in the centre of each.
- Fold into a half-moon; press the edge to seal; crimp with a fork or pinch into pleats.
Stage 4 - Cook (choose one)
- Fry: Heat oil to 170°C. Fry in batches of 5, 2-3 minutes per side until deep gold. Drain on paper.
- Bake: Heat oven to 200°C (180°C fan). Place sambousek on a lined tray. Brush with egg wash; scatter sesame seeds. Bake 18-20 minutes until deep gold.
Stage 5 - Serve
- Eat warm. A small dish of laban (drinking yogurt) or a wedge of lemon completes the plate.
Notes
- Pomegranate molasses: Adds depth and a slight sweet-sourness that's distinctly Levantine-Arabian. Don't substitute.
- Cool filling: Warm filling steams the dough from inside and breaks the seal in the fryer. Cool fully.
- Bake vs fry: Frying gives shatter, baking gives soft. Both are right. Saudi households do both.
Storage
- Refrigerate (cooked) 3 days; reheat at 180°C.
- Freeze unbaked / unfried 2 months. Cook from frozen, adding 4-5 minutes.
More like this
Kibbeh Bil Laban
Fine bulgur soaks; lamb mince blends with bulgur, grated onion, allspice and salt to a smooth paste; small torpedoes are shaped around a separately-cooked lamb-onion-pine-nut filling. Torpedoes deep-fry briefly until golden, then slip into the warm stabilised yogurt sauce (whisked with egg white, cornflour and garlic), simmer for 4 minutes to warm through. Garlic-mint butter on top.
Shish Barak
A simple wheat-flour-and-water dough rests for 30 minutes. The filling: onion fries; lamb mince browns with baharat, allspice, cinnamon, salt and pepper; cooled. The dough rolls thin, cuts into 5 cm rounds; a small spoon of filling sits on each; folded in half to make a half-moon; the corners pinched together over the back to form a tiny tortellini. Lined up on a tray; baked for 12 minutes at 200°C to firm and lightly colour. A warm yogurt sauce simmers gently, thickened with cornstarch (or whisked egg white) so it doesn't split. The baked dumplings drop in and warm 5 minutes. Garlic-and-mint butter sizzles on top.
Shish Barak
The lamb filling fries with onion, allspice and a touch of cinnamon; the dough rolls thin, stamps into 4 cm rounds; each gets a small ball of filling, folds in half, then the two corners are pinched together into a tortellini shape. The dumplings bake at 200°C for 15 minutes to brown the tops. Whisked yogurt stabilises with cornflour and egg white, simmers gently with crushed garlic. The dumplings drop in for the last 5 minutes. Final flourish: sizzled garlic-mint butter.
Mutabbaq
The Saudi street snack that almost every food court and roadside griddle in the kingdom has running through service. You make a stretchy oil-rich dough and let it rest for a full hour so it develops the pliability that mutabbaq depends on (the trick is that the dough has to stretch translucent without tearing). While it rests you cook a filling of ground beef or lamb with onion, leek, garlic and baharat, cool it, then mix in beaten eggs and chopped parsley just before folding. The eggs go in raw and cook inside the pastry as it griddles. Each dough ball gets oiled heavily and pulled by hand on an oiled surface into a 35 cm square thin enough to see through, with the filling spread in a 15 cm square in the centre. The edges fold in to enclose, and the whole parcel griddles on a hot pan with a glug of oil for two or three minutes per side until it's amber-crisp on the outside and the egg has set inside. Cut into quarters, eaten warm at the counter or carried home wrapped in paper.