Uzbek Somsa (Veggies or meat-filled pastry)
This flaky snack delivers crowd-pleasing flavours, with endless scope to make it your own.
Nilufar Allayarova
- prepare
- cook
- Moderate
Caption:Butter filled pastry with meat and pumpkin filling.Photo credit:Supplied
Most would have heard of deep-fried Indian classic samosa’s with spiced fillings, but Uzbekistan’s version of this pastry-filled snack is actually baked.
Wellington-based Nilufar Allayarova says it’s traditionally made with meat, onions and spices like cumin and coriander or with pumpkin (but use less onions). You can mix and match your own fillings too, like spinach and feta cheese, or chicken and mushrooms.
Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup water
- 1 tbsp salt
- 200g butter, melted
- For meat filling: 500g mince beef
- 500g-700g onion, finely diced/sliced (depends on how juicy you want your filling to be, add more onion for more moisture)
- 2 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tbsp salt
- For pumpkin filling: 500g pumpkin, cut into small cubes or grated in a food processor
- 300g onion, finely diced/sliced
- Same seasoning as meat
Instructions
- For the dough, mix the salt with the water until it is fully dissolved. Add flour and knead well for 10 minutes until the dough comes together and is smooth.
- Cover and set the dough aside for 30 minutes to rest.
- Roll out the dough into a large circle shape, about 0.25cm thick, on a floured surface. You will need a big surface area to do this so if the kitchen counter is too small, you can roll it out on a table.
- Brush your melted butter evenly all over the dough.
- Roll the dough very tightly into a long log (as if making cinnamon rolls). Be gentle so as not to rip it.
- Cut about 4cm length pieces from the log. Flatten each piece, cover the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes. (This will make it easier to roll out the pieces without the dough being soft and sticky.)
- Simply mix ingredients together to prepare the filling ahead of rolling out the dough.
- Preheat oven to 180C. Take out the pastry from the fridge.
- On a floured surface, roll out each piece into about 15cm diameter circle.
- Put a tablespoon of your filling in the center. Fold the pastry into your desired shape. We usually do triangles or crescents.
- Once you have made each somsa, brush the tops of them with a beaten egg. Sprinkle a little bit of whole cumin on the top.
- Bake for 20-30 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Make sure to check the bottom of the somsa for readiness too, so it’s not raw and soggy underneath.
