NOT REAL SAMSA

MY HOME-STYLE SAMSA.

This recipe was found by me many years ago in a wonderful newspaper of Uzbekistan and later adopted to different ingredients and different places that I stayed in. I call it samsa, only because the pirozhki in triangle shape with meat and onion inside were called like that in Central Asia. There is not much common with a real samsa in this recipe, but it still gives me courage to highly advice you to try it at home.

Ingredients:

1 cup of warm milk

1 packet of active-dry yeast (2  1/2 tsp)

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp of salt (if using the unsalted butter)

3-4 cup of all-purpose flour (depends on the flour)

2 sticks of unsalted butter or margarine (softened). If you use margarine, avoid the salt.

Filling:

1 1/2 lb ground turkey meat

2 medium onion

ground black pepper

salt

ground cumin and coriander

In my early attempts to make the samsa, I added 2 eggs, but it requires little bit more time.

Warm up 1 cup of milk. Touch it with your finger, the milk should have  pleasant warm temperature. Mix in 1 packet of the active-dry yeast and sugar.Let it stand.

Sift in 3 cups of flour in a separate bowl . Add softened butter and mix in the butter with your hands. Do not knead the dough, try to get crumbles.

In the cup of milk, you will see the active growth of the yeast. Add the mixture into the flour. Knead the dough into the ball shape. Add more flour, if needed. The dough should be very pliable, not sticky at all. Sometimes I add up to 5 cups of flour.

After the dough is shaped into a ball, put it in the bowl and covet it tightly with plastic and place it in refrigerator.

Time to prepare the meat filling.

Clean the onion and process it in the food processor. Mix the ground turkey meat and onions in medium size bowl. Add salt, pepper, cumin, coriander. Mix it very well.

Heat the oven 350 F.

Cover the baking tray with parchment paper.

Get the dough out of the refrigerator , cut 1/4 part of it. Place the rest of the dough back in the refrigerator. On the floured surface, cut the dough into walnut -size pieces. Roll each piece with the rolling pin into a circle. Place 1 tbsp (or less) of meat filling in the middle of the circle. Pull two top sides of the circle and stick them together, add the bottom side and shape the triangle. Place the shaped samsa on the baking tray. The stitches should on the bottom.When you fill one baking tray, brush the tops of the samsas with egg-wash. You can sprinkle sesame seeds or black cumin (black sesame) seeds (optional). Put the baking tray into the oven.Bake for 30 minutes.

Continue with the remaining dough.

Long time ago, I was adding 2 eggs into the milk mixture. After that, the process is absolutely the same. The only different requirement is that you will need to leave the dough in refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

I also used ground beef instead of turkey.

If you have any questions, please write in the comments, I will be happy to help.