I love this typical dish of Arab cuisine. It’s delicious! It’s a kind of appetizer that has several variations. I’ve documented myself about the recipe and , I’ve noticed that many people use eggs and milk in addition to the ingredients for traditional filo pastry to make this dough. I wanted to experiment my version of filo pastry adding the white wine vinegar, the melted butter and the yeast that creates some nice bubbles on the dough, but I haven’t chosen to use eggs or milk. The adjectives that we can be used to describe this amazing dish are: crunchy and tasty! The brick should be served hot. I’ve chosen to prepare them with minced meat, potatoes and spices, but you can peprare them with tuna and potatoes. Let’s say you can stuff it as you want. You can flavored this amazing appetizer with some of the most common spices such as nutmeg, cumin and turmeric. Obviously youcan choose the ones you prefer! Enjoy your meal!
Ingredients for 8 bricks.
For my version of filo pastry:
- 200 grams type 0 flour
- 2 teaspoons of chemical yeast
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 40 grams melted butter
- 1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
- Lukewarm water
For the stuffing:
- 200 grams ground beef
- 50 grams white onion
- 120 grams boiled potatoes
- Parsley
- Salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Freshly ground black pepper
- Turmeric
- Sweet paprika
To seal the bricks:
- Type 0 flour
- Water
For frying:
- Sunflower oil
Method
This dough is created by mixing all indicated ingredients together. It should be kneaded for about ten minutes. Form a ball, wrap it with cling film and let the dough rest for a couple of hours at room temperature. After divide the dough into small loaves; roll every pasta dough through a pasta machine. Create thin sheets. Also roll out each sheet with a rolling pin. Filo pastry sheets must be quite wide and above all very thin, they must be almost transparent as well. Create many thin sheets and overlap each other, taking care to sprinkle each sheet of filo pastry with plenty of cornstarch. Enclose every filo pastry sheet between two sheets of baking paper, roll them up and wrap with cling film as weel. In this way they can’t become dry. Keep in the fridge.
Now prepare the filling. Peel and dice the onion, fry in a pan with plenty of extra virgin olive oil. Add the ground beef. Stir and cook over low heat. When it’s cooked, allow it to cool. Pour the ground beef with the onion in a bowl, add mashed potatoes, the chopped parsley, the salt, the pepper and all the other spices. Mix and place some of filling on each sheet that you have cut into rectangles. Place a spoonful of filling in the base of a rectangle,. Brush with some more batter and roll up. Bricks are as spring rolls. You can prepare the batter mixing flour and water. Fry for a fews minutes until golden and crisp. Serve with parsley leaves and if you like with lemon slices. In fact you can sprinkle Tunisian bricks with lemon juice before eating.