Shish Barak

One of my favorite cookery writers is Claudia Roden, and one of my favorite cooking books, Roden's Arabesque.  The book is a wonderful collection of easy recipes from Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon.  Yum!  I can't tell you how much I love food from Turkey and Lebanon.

Shish baraks are from Lebanon and they're hard to explain.  Stuffed with meat, they're vaguely like tortellinis, but the taste and texture is very different, mostly because the wrapping isn't pasta but filo dough.  Shish baraks are exquisite, in large part because of the sauce, which is simply yogurt!  But on top of the shish barak, it doesn't taste like yogurt at all — more like a savory, creamy, rich gravy.  Talk about heavenly chemistry!

Of course, not having all the ingredients, I had to modify Roden's recipe.  For instance, I didn't have pomegranate molasses, so used a combination of honey and tomato paste — what you want is a sweet and sour taste and this combo works.  I also halved the recipe.  So here goes.

Shish Barak adapted from Claudia Roden's Arabesque

For the filling:

1 onion, chopped
1/2 pound ground lamb or beef
11/2 tablespoons sunflower oil (I just used peanut)
About an ounce of pine nuts (I didn't have pine nuts so used slivered almonds)
salt & pepper
1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses (I used a tablespoon each of honey and tomato paste)

For the pastry:

3 sheets of filo
4 tablespoons of butter, melted

For the sauce:

1 small container of yogurt at room temp
sprinkle of salt
1 small clove of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
some dried mint

To make the filling, fry the onions in the oil until they're nice and golden.  Add the ground meat, salt, pepper and spices.  The trick here is to make sure everything is extra spiced because it's going to have to support the blander yogurt.  Stir and make sure the meat is fully cooked.  Then add the pomegranate molasses (or honey and tomato paste mixture).  Turn the heat off.  In another pan, put in a drop of oil and cook the nuts until they're golden.  Add to the meat mixture.  Give everything a good stir.

Now you have to deal with the filo dough.  Usually they come in large rectangles.  Just cut them up until you have rough rectangles of 6 inches by 4 (I think I just halved the large rectangles and then halved the smaller pieces).  Brush a sheet with melted butter.  Make sure the longer edges of the rectangle is facing you.  Then put a thin row of meat filling along that long edge.  Then roll the filo like you would sushi.  When you have a long snake, begin to shape the roll into a tight coil.  The trick here is to crush the roll a little while coiling, otherwise, the filo tends to break.  Put the little coil on a large baking tray (which should be greased).  Repeat with the rest of the filo and filling.  Right before you put it all in the oven, brush all the coils with melted butter.

Make sure the oven has been pre-heated to 400 degrees F and bake for about 30 minutes.  When ready, the little coils should be nice and golden, with the intense aroma making you salivate.

For the sauce, beat the yogurt with the salt and minced garlic.  You can heat the yogurt or serve at room temperature (I like it slightly heated, but be careful that you don't curdle the yogurt by heating it at too high a temp).

Serve the coils with a little bit of sauce and garnish with the dried mint (I used oregano).