When I was younger, I so often wondered why my mother bothered with elaborate dishes. Why do all that work for just some food that we will eat quickly and forget about it soon (and be grumpy and too tired to enjoy it at first). Now I think I know: it's about home, and family, and togetherness. It's about expressing love with food (I love you Jojo!). So for all that, and for nostalgia and homesickness, I decided that I wanted to make sfieha!
I called my mother to ask for recipe and she thought I was crazy (which I am!). Now I might have mentioned before, my mother is the best cook ever! But when it comes to recipes, she's not the best (which I guess is natural, she has such good instincts about food that she doesn't need to follow a recipe!). So I got a recipe, which had a lot of estimates, and that is what you get here. I had troubles with the dough, but with persistence I made it work and it came out yummy!
You will see that this is a lot of work, but the good news is I made about 40 pies, that I shared with my nice new neighbors, with friends, and have a bunch in my freezer!
So here it goes!
Ingredients:
For the dough:
1 kg flour
1/2 cup olive oil (a bit extra butter if you would like)
1/2 cup yogurt
2 table spoons yeast
2 table spoons sugar
1.5 table spoons salt
Water (it’s the tricky part!)
For the topping:
1 kg minced beef
2 large onions
1 cup pine nuts
Salt
Mixed Spices (
1 large lemon
1 cup Tahini
½ yogurt
Begin preparation with the dough:
Ø
Mix the flour and olive oil (and butter) together, and rub
the oil well into the flour and you get a consistent smooth texture.
Ø
Then add water, a bit at a time. The water has to be a bit
warmer than 37 degrees c (yeast lives at body temperature, considering the
water will cool off a bit in contact with the cold ingredients, you need to
make it a bit warmer).
o
Janan, my lovely sister, has suggested her brilliant idea:
add the water to the yogurt to get the water in the right temperature and this
way you have the correct portion! Thanks Janan!
Ø
knead the dough. This video offers a good example of how to do that:
Preparing the meat:
Ø
Lightly brown the pine nuts in 2 spoon of olive oil
o
the pine nuts cook fast and will continue cooking after you
take them out, so keep stirring and take them out quickly
o
spread them on a tray and let cool off
Ø
Cut the onions very thin (you can also grate them, it is
easier)
Ø
Add the meat, spices and salt, and cook well, stirring them
well to crumble the meat
Ø
Once the meat is ready, take off the heat
Ø
Prepare the tahini:
o
Add the lemon juice, the yogurt (you can add more than one
lemon if you like your food more sour, especially if the yogurt isn’t) and a
bit of salt and water to the tahini.
o
Mix well until it is smooth
Ø
Add the tahini and pine nuts to the meat.
Preparing the pies:
Ø
Once your dough has risen (more than double the original
size), cut to small balls.
o
(ideally, and what my mother would approve of is small
balls, the size of a small egg. However, I discovered soon that was taking
forever, so I went a bit bigger! (still yummy, even though it doesn’t look as
good!).
Ø
Let the balls rest for a while
Ø
Rub some olive oil on a cutting board and on your roller
and start roll the dough with a roller
o
Kind of like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSRQf3SNQl8
But you don’t
need it as thin
o
If you don’t have a roller, a friend suggested using a
glass bottle (you know you want to finish a bottle of wine!)
Ø Update: this time, I used the roller and cookie cutter, so made larger pieces and cut to neat small even pies!
Ø Lay the flat dough on an over sheet or tray
Ø and to give credit were credit is due, the cookie cutter idea was from my first friend ever, and one of my best friends of all time, Keren! Keren, having you in my life has been amazing, I love you, my friend!
Ø
Add a few spoons of the meat mix on top, enough to cover
the surface without spilling out.
Ø
Put in the oven and bake until golden
Continue until you do all the dough you have.
Ø I used three trays that I continued preparing while the first rounds were cooking and alternating once each tray was baked (my oven is VERY small, which mean small trays and many rounds!)
Ø Update- I have two cookie sheers and bought a couple of disposable ones. The disposable ones are ok, but not great, so if you could avoid, you should!
è Et voilà,
you have awesome sfieha for a long time or a nice party!
Enjoy and share with friends! (in fact, get a friend to work with you!)
And look how much better it looks now:
My kitchen in the process!
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