Recipe of the week from Moroccan Cooking: Moroccan cigars

These cigar-like savoury pastry rolls are known as Bourek in Morocco. This is a popular restaurant dish.

Servings: 20
Time: 40 minutes prep time, 25-30 minutes cooking.

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
705 g lean minced beef or lamb
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground ginger
Ground pepper
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
5 eggs
500 g filo pastry
180 g butter, melted

Filling:
Sauté the onion in the olive oil until it is soft. Add the minced meat, stirring and breaking it well apart during the cooking. Add cinnamon, allspice, ginger and pepper and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the meat is well cooked and lump free. Add parsley. Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl and pour over the meat. Cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly, until egg mixture takes on a creamy consistency. Adjust taste if necessary. Cool.

Pastry:
Preheat oven to 150°C.
Cut each sheet of filo into three equal-sized rectangles. Stack up and cover with a damp cloth until filling is ready. Brush the top rectangle with melted butter and place a teaspoon of filling along one of the short edges. Fold in the long edges and near end of pastry around the filling and roll up into a cigar shape. Repeat until all the pastry squares are filled.

Place the cigars side by side on a greased baking tray and brush with melted butter. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the cigars are golden. Serve hot.



Notes and review:
As usual, I only made half a recipe. I forgot to buy parsley, so I had to leave it out. I don’t think it mattered much, perhaps a note of veggie freshness that was missing. Another time I would like to try cilantro. The meat I used was beef.

The filo sheets I got can’t have been the same size as those available in Australia (where the book was published) – they must have been bigger, because when divided in three, each rectangle of dough was enough for a tablespoon of filling, rather than the stated teaspoon. With a teaspoon of filling the rolls would have been cigarette slender and I would have run out of dough before half the filling was used up. I got 14 rolls out of 6 whole sheets of dough (270 grams) – it should have been more but the outermost sheet of filo was too torn up to use, and I only got 2 rolls out of the second sheet. When the dough was used up I still had enough filling left for at least six more rolls.

The preparation and cooking went well, apart from one minor burn due to working too close to a hot stove (my first kitchen injury since I started this recipe challenge). There is quite a bit of work involved in rolling up the “cigars”, but it’s worth it.

The filling is good on its own and I think with the addition of cream and Parmigiano-Reggiano it would make a very good pasta sauce. With added tomatoes it could be made into a fairly authentic meat sauce for moussaka.

The amount of spices given in the recipe gives the mince a mild flavour and can safely be increased. I recommend adjusting the flavour after the beaten eggs have been added. I also recommend adding some salt.

This is a great party dish, perfect finger food that's small enough for nibbling on. It can be prepared ahead and frozen once the rolls are all rolled, before the second cooking stage. I think it would be nice served with a sweet dip of some sort, perhaps sweet chilli sauce, sweet and sour sauce or even redcurrant jelly.

While I did like these meat-filled bourek, I kept thinking how delicious they would be filled with cheese, perhaps feta, fresh goat’s cheese or even Roquefort, and as a matter of fact they often are made with a cheese filling. Next time, I think I will try just that.

Recipe from Moroccan Cooking: Tagine of lamb with quinces

Servings: 6.
Time: 30 minutes prep + 1 hour cooking.

1 kg shoulder of lamb cut in 2 cm pieces
2 large onions, chopped in 1 cm cubes (keep them separate)
Ground pepper
1/2 tsp ground mildly hot paprika (or use sweet and mix in a little ground cayenne or chili pepper)
water
1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/4 tsp ground saffron
1/2 tsp ground ginger
500 g quinces, cored, halved and peeled
60 g butter
1 cup pitted prunes, pre-soaked

Put lamb pieces and one chopped onion in a heavy-bottomed cooking pot. Season to taste with pepper and paprika and cover with water. Add cilantro, saffron and ginger and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for about 1 hour or until lamb is tender.

While lamb cooks, cut the quinces into pieces roughly the same size as the meat pieces. Melt butter in a frying pan and cook the quinces and the second onion together until lightly golden. When the lamb has been cooking for about 30 minutes, add the fried quinces and onion, along with the prunes. Finish cooking and serve warm, with rice.

The book suggests that dates may be used instead of prunes and pears instead of quinces.

More Moroccan recipes

Here are links to some collections of Moroccan recipes. I only picked a few that looked good, but if you have a link to other good websites with Moroccan recipes, including blogs, please post it in a comment to this post.

The first collection is an extract from Bea Sandler’s The African Cookbook. There are only 6 recipes, but there is also a description of a Moroccan dinner and suggestions as to how to serve Moroccan food authentically. Check out the other extracts from the book as well.

Maroque Moroccan recipes. This is mainly an online shopping site with Moroccan goods, but there are a number of yummy recipes as well.

A large collection from various cookbooks: World Health Circle of International Cooking

Moroccan food at AllRecipes

One more:
Riddled with advertising. Probably has pop-up ads as well. Astray recipes

Recipe from Moroccan Cooking: Orange salad

It isn’t clear from the book whether this is supposed to be a side dish, an entrée or a dessert, but I can imagine it being good as any of those. I can even imagine eating it, well chilled, for refreshment on a hot afternoon instead of ice cream.

I was unable to find the Moroccan name for this salad, but I did find information saying it is good served with lamb dishes.

Serves: 6.
Time: 15 minutes.

6 ripe oranges
8 dates, chopped
1/4 cup blanched almonds, slivered
Orange flower water
1 tbs mint leaves, chopped
Ground cinnamon

Peel oranges, removing all pith, and slice crossways. Put in a shallow dish with dates and almonds and flavour to taste with orange flower water. Sprinkle lightly with mint and cinnamon and serve.

Recipe from Moroccan Cooking: Fried Moroccan bread with cinnamon

…otherwise known as Cinnamon French Toast. But who am I to argue with the authors? If they want to call it Moroccan, they can. (BTW, French toast isn’t necessarily French, the dish being a logical invention in any culture where bread is baked, as a way of using up a stale loaf. Therefore it could have arisen independently in Morocco, but it is more likely that it was brought over by the French).

When I was a child and my mother was undecided as to what to serve for lunch or dinner, I would often suggest French toast – only we called it “Poor Knights” and ate it with rhubarb jam and sometimes whipped cream as well. I make it occasionally myself as a brunch dish (without jam or cream), but I have never tried the cinnamon variety.

Servings: 4-6.
Time: 15 minutes to prepare, 10 minutes to cook.

1/2 white baguette (French stick, French loaf)
1-2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence (it says “imitation vanilla” in the book – I don’t see why I can’t use the real thing if I have it)
Butter
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 tbs ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Cut baguette diagonally into 2 cm thick slices. In a bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed and then mix in milk and vanilla. In a shallow bowl (I suggest a soup dish), mix sugar and spices. Melt some butter in a frying pan. Dip slices of bread into egg/milk mixture and fry until crisp and golden on both sides. Place for a moment on absorbent paper to drain and while it is still hot, dip into the sugar/spice mixture. Keep adding butter to the pan as needed.

The book suggests coffee as a good accompaniment.

Recipe from Moroccan Cooking: Khobz (wholemeal flat bread)

Servings: 16.
Time: 60 minutes preparation, 12 minutes cooking.

2 ½ cups wholemeal flour
1 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp salt
7 g dry yeast
1 1/4 cup tepid water
1/2 tsp ground sweet paprika
1/3 cup corn meal
1 tbs oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tbs sesame seeds

Combine 1/2 cup of flour, the sugar, salt yeast and water in a bowl. Stand covered in a warm place until foaming. Sift the remaining flour, the paprika and corn meal into the bowl and add the oil. Knead until smooth. Stand covered in a warm place for 20 minutes.

Divide into 16 parts, roll into balls and flatten into rounds. Place on a greased baking tray and brush with egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds. Stand, covered, until puffy. Bake for 12 minutes.

Recipe from Moroccan Cooking: Eggplant purée

One thing I am unhappy with about this book is that it gives the Moroccan names only for a couple of dishes. This I intend to rectify by discovering what those names are, if possible, and including them with the recipes.

This eggplant purée is called Zahluk or Zaalouk in Morocco, and is known all over North Africa and in Turkey and probably other countries of the Near East. More vegetables are used in some versions, such as zucchini and tomatoes.

To serve 4.
Time: 40 minutes preparation, 20 minutes cooking.

1 kg eggplants, peeled and cut into 2 cm cubes
1/3 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Ground pepper
1 tsp ground sweet paprika
3 pitta breads
1 egg white, lightly beaten
2 tbs cumin seeds

To prepare eggplant:
Steam eggplant cubes in a colander or bamboo steamer over boiling water for 30 minutes. Heat oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add eggplant cubes, garlic, pepper and paprika. Lower the temperature a little. Fry and stir constantly for about 10 minutes, or until the eggplant is very soft. Serve hot with the toasted pitta bread.

To prepare the bread:
Split each pitta bread into two rounds. Brush with egg white, sprinkle with cumin seeds and bake at 180°C for 20 minutes, or until crisp. Break into pieces before serving.

Serve as a starter or as part of a meal of several small dishes.