Uzbek Samsa – is a nutritious dish of the Uzbek cuisine that is prepared in the oven both at parties and daily. In fact, Samsa – are baked puff pastries with different fillings and with a unique aroma and flavor of the East. The Samsa can be of various types and shapes. There are a lot of recipes and ways of cooking.
Uzbek samsa recipe
Samsa is made with meat (lamb, chicken, beef), with vegetables (pumpkin, potato, onion), as well as with mushrooms, eggs, peas, herbs and even with sweet fillings. What gives it an unrepeatable touch are the spices that enrich the filling flavor – cumin, black/red paprika and sesame (it is tossed over Samsa).
Before Samsa was baked only in grilled tandir – the taste and aroma of this Samsa are indescribable! The tandir Samsa is prepared and today – it is distinguished by its size, flavor, aroma, it carries a lot of fat from the tail of lamb, a lot of onion, and whole pieces of minced meat. For reasons of comfort and time economy, some types of samsa are now prepared in gas or electric ovens.
There are recipes from the Uzbek cuisine of sweet samsas stuffed with fruit jams. The sweet samsa above is sprinkled with sugar and sesame – this dish is served with tea.
Whatever the samsa filling – this crispy and tender pie melts in your mouth. It is impossible to forget the taste of the true Uzbek samsa! To prepare the samsa use the unleavened dough or the puff pastry with yeast.
Preparation
The recipe for dough for samsa is roughly the same – flour, water and salt are mixed. There are recipes with the addition of melted fat and butter. You can use the puff pastry already made, or prepare it at home.
In the samsa filling, you have to put a lot of onion. The juice is going to mix harmoniously with the flavor of the samsa filling.
How to mold samsa depends on the shape you want to give it – circular, triangular, or square. The puff pastry stretched up to 2 mm thick is cut into circles or squares of 10×10 cm. In the center, the filling and a piece of fat from the tail of the lamb are placed, then it is closed to folds and placed with the folds down on a previously greased baking sheet. When the samsa is baked in the tandyr, its lower part is moistened with saltwater.
Before putting samsa in the oven, spread it with egg yolk and sprinkle with sesame seeds. The preparation time depends on the filling. If they are vegetables (pumpkin, potato), it is baked for 10-15 minutes, if it is meat – for 30-40 minutes.
