Noshe Djan: Afghan Food and Cookery
Boulanee
Page 82
Cuisine: Central Asian | Course Type: Other
Tags: hand-held pies
Single Review Display
friederike from Berlin,
It's a bit of a disappointment. I made these last night to bring them to work today as I didn't have time to go home for dinner. I had some issues with the preparation, but the few small bites I prepared for snacking were quite nice. The dough was crunchy and delicious, the filling wasn't that spectacular but not really a problem either. However, the boulanees I had for dinner today didn't resemble those from yesterday at all. The dough was slobby, salty and little else, and the filling was soo overpowering! Not a good idea. Clearly, Boulanees are only a good idea when you can serve them immedeately and eat them hot. Also, the boulanees I made for snacking yesterday were much smaller (on circles with a diameter of 7 cm instead of 13 cm) and therefore took less filling, which might be why the filling wasn't an issue then.
Preparation:
I enjoyed that the preparation of these was pretty easy. The dough is more or less 2 parts flour, one part water, a little salt and that's it, the filling doesn't need any pre-cooking, only 'knead the leeks until they begin to get soft' (really!). The dough was quite hard to roll out in the beginning, but once you've reached a thickness of about 1 cm it actually became easy. Otherwise you can always try to use a pasta machine.
However, you're supposed to fry the boulanees, which does not work at all. You need to deep fry them instead. Also, with a diameter of 13 cm I could only use 1 tbsp filling per boulanee instead of 2-3 tbsp, and yet I ended up with half of the dough unused.
We also cut a few long strips of leftover dough and deepfried them as well - delicious! I could imagine adding some spices to the dough, then frying strips of dough and serving them as a kind of homemade Grissini. As we have some much leftover dough, I'm considering whether we should try to use it as a pizza base, though I'm a little hesitant if its then really necessary to deep fry the dough.
(edited 7th October 2012) (0) comment (3) useful
Login or register to add your own review of this recipe.