American hot dogs, Russian pies, Caucasian shawarma, Central Asian peoples samsa are national dishes. But if the first three types of dough products are quite familiar to us, then the latter, as a rule, is a rather vague idea. So let’s get acquainted, dear readers, with what kind of delicacy it is.
Triangular Cakes
As you already understood, samsa is nothing but pies. Usually they are prepared in the form of large triangles or squares. The homeland of baking is the Mediterranean, Central and Central Asia, the African continent. Traditionally, samsa is made with pumpkin, as well as with chopped or minced meat. Among the Central Asian peoples, who had previously led a nomadic way of life, fat tail fat has long been put in the dough. Potato with spices and onions, peas and other vegetables and legumes are taken as a filling. But samsa with pumpkin is especially loved all the same - sometimes sweet, then, on the contrary, spicy, piquant. This preference turns out to be a dish in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, among the population of the Arabian Peninsula. As for the test, there is also a special discussion about it. First of all, it should be fresh. Although, of course, rich samsa is also baked. With a sweet pumpkin, of course, the most. But for meat pies it’s better to just fresh. Secondly, puff pastry is often kneaded for them. Then the baking is much tastier. Naturally, the fact that the cakes are baked is also important. Central Asian and Transcaucasian samsa - with pumpkin, meat and other fillings - is still cooked according to ancient traditions, in clay tandoor. But the dish that has already migrated to European cuisine is baked in ordinary gas and electric ovens.
Samsa plain: ingredients
However, nightingales do not feed fables. Therefore, we will smoothly move from the story of pies to recipes for their preparation. Surely they will come in handy for many of you! And for the training samples we take Uzbek culinary as the most accessible to us, accustomed to European traditions. Samsa with
pumpkin, the recipe of which is offered to you, has a peculiar salty-sweet flavor, and the interior itself is necessarily added to the filling.
The pastry dough is kneaded with yeast, but without any fat or eggs. Ingredients: kilogram of wheat flour (sifted), 100-200 g of water, 50 g of fresh dried yeast, salt (1.5-2 teaspoons). And to make a delicious samsa with pumpkin, the recipe offers the following filling: one and a half kg of pumpkin, 150 g of internal bacon (fat tail), half a kilogram of onion, sugar and salt to taste. You can put a tablespoon of sugar and tea salt. Be sure to add more hot ground pepper. Indeed, real samsa with pumpkin in Uzbek is also peppered!
Samsa ordinary: cooking and baking
Knead the dough from the listed ingredients. To do this, warm the water to a warm state, dilute the yeast, add salt and half the indicated amount of flour. Mix well, cover with a towel and place the dough in a warm place. When the dough comes up, add some more flour, beat it and put it in heat again. It increased in volume, rose well, began to "run away" - you can start rolling out. Pinch small pieces from the dough, roll them into thin cakes, put the filling and pinch with triangles. Then lay on oiled baking sheets, put in a preheated oven and bake until cooked. For the filling, be sure to ripe the pumpkin, peel and seed, and chop the flesh into small pieces or cubes. Also finely chop onion and lard. Pour in salt, sugar, pepper, mix. Put in pies and bake on health! We hope that the proposed Uzbek samsa with pumpkin will be to your taste.
Samsa with lamb and pumpkin
The following recipe is also not quite ordinary. And you’ll probably not get used to the taste of pies right away. But when you try it ... In a word, here's a samsa with pumpkin and meat. Start with minced meat. For him, meat of a young lamb, lean, is suitable, because lard is separately added to it. So, divide 1 kg of meat into pieces convenient for frying and simmer until cooked. Then cut them against the fibers into small pieces. Chop onion finely (4 onions). Cut a half-kilogram of pumpkin into slices, put in the oven and bake until soft (half-cooked), and then chop into cubes. Salt, pepper to taste. And chop more lamb fat.
Now it's the turn of the test. Using his example, we will tell you how to cook samsa with pumpkin from yeast-free unleavened dough. Sift flour (1 kg or so), add water and salt, knead a cool dough. Divide it into parts, each roll into a large layer half a centimeter thick or even thinner. Cut it into squares. In the middle of each, put a piece of bacon, pumpkin and minced meat, cover the pies in the shape of triangles. Lubricate each beaten egg. Lubricate the baking sheets with oil and lay the blanks on them downwards “seam”. Bake for about 25-30 minutes (until the pies are lightly browned). It’s better to eat them hot - it's tastier!
Samsa puff: dough
Puff samsa with pumpkin is also quite a traditional dish for
Uzbek cuisine . The main difficulty in cooking is in the dough itself, or rather, in rolling it out. After all, it is important that the oil that is put in the baking dish soaks all the layers, so that when rolling it does not tear the dough. Only in this case, the pies will be tender, airy - a true treat. You will need 700 g of premium flour, a little less than half a glass of water, half a teaspoon of tea salt and 450 g of butter or baking margarine. Sift the flour - it must gain air. Take almost all the flour (leave 100 grams to sprinkle rolling), add water and a piece of melted butter, salt and knead the dough. Knead it well, roll it into a ball, put it in a plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator for about an hour. Leave the oil to stand at room temperature, then mash it with your hands (in cellophane!) Into a flat cake. When the dough hardens, take it out of the refrigerator, flatten it a bit and roll it into a layer. Put the oil in the middle, cover it crosswise with the edges, like an envelope with a letter. Wipe the rolling pin with flour, beat lightly on the "envelope", and then with a little pressure roll the layer away from you (in one direction). Try to keep your thickness uniform. Fold the dough with a roller, wrap it again in cellophane and put it in the refrigerator again. After an hour, take it out and roll it out again, only towards you. Repeat the procedure twice more. Having taken out the last time, roll out already to make pies.
Samsa puff: filling
And another
Uzbek samsa with pumpkin. Clean medium-sized ripe pumpkin, grate on a coarse grater. Cut into half rings and fry in butter 2 large onions. Mix with pumpkin, salt, pepper, add a little turmeric and grated ginger. Do not forget about
interior fat. If it’s not there, take bacon or smoked bacon - it’s also very good in pies of this type. Alternatively, cracklings will do. What to do next - you already know. Roll out the dough from the dough, apply the filling, and fill it up. Lubricate the semi-finished products with a beaten egg and bake in a heated oven (or tandoor).
Fried samsa
Many people like
fried pies , not baked ones
. They are right in their own way. After all, fried dough has a very special taste and such a delicious aroma! However, if you coped with puff pastry, then you can cope with fried samsa all the more! Knead the dough from sifted flour and eggs. Do not try to make it too cool, otherwise the pies will turn out tough. Let it be soft enough, but not stick to your hands. Cover the dough with a napkin and let it “rest”. Then roll thin round or square cakes, put the filling, pinch the edges. In a casserole, heat vegetable oil or fat, dip the pies into it so that they are completely covered, fry, turn over, 6-7 minutes - until golden brown. Take out with a slotted spoon and throw a new batch. Fat or oil should be added from time to time. We will talk about the filling for such samsa separately.
How to start fried samsa
First of all, of course, with meat. Minced meat is more suitable than others for this type of dough products. For example, here's a recipe. Grind fat mutton in a meat grinder. Chop the onion. To soften, spasser it in ghee, add meat, salt and pepper. Sauté the minced meat until meat juice begins to stand out. Then remove the frying pan from the stove, let the contents cool and stuff the pies. Since the meat you have taken is fatty, and the samsa will be fried, do not put additional pieces of fat in the products.
And more about the filling and the test
Throughout the article, we talked about how to cook a dish with pumpkin filling in its different versions. However, you can make pies with eggs and onions, only with herbs or only with onions. And baked samsa with the so-called pumpkin cue - a kind of very sweet pumpkin porridge with saffron. 2.5 kg of sugar, 2 liters of water and 2 lemons are taken per 1 kg of vegetable. Sugar dissolves in water, and when the syrup boils, the pumpkin pulp grated on a coarse grater is put in it and boiled until thick with frequent stirring. At the end, pour the juice of lemons and pour a pinch of saffron. The cooled porridge also plays the role of minced meat. In this case, the dough for samsa is kneaded not on water, but on pumpkin juice.