For the "Get Down with the Ground, Part 3" TD, I decided I'd wrestle with some filo dough and go ethnic with the goods. I've always been a fan of meat pies, but never made one myself. I wanted to make one with ground lamb because that sounded really tasty to me. But the problem with meat pies is that sometimes the meat filling gets overshadowed by the dough crust. So I wanted to do something that had a lighter crust to let the flavor of the ground meat mixture really shine!
I decided to do a smoked lamb burek, which is a Eastern European meat pastry. You'll find this pastry throughout Eastern Europe, and I find it interesting because of all the different forms it takes depending on where you find it. For this cook, I chose to do the Bosnian burek because it just looked cool.
I started out with some coarsely ground lamb...
I've never smoked ground meat before, so I just spread it out on wire rack and stuck it in the cooker. I was going for a rich reddish coloring on the meat, which I got really easily with cherrywood smoke.
I chopped up the smoked lamb and finished rendering out the fat with some onions. See the red color!
The spice mixture for the meat included parsley, toasted pine nuts, pomegranate molasses, cardamom, allspice, salt, pepper, and tahini.
This was the final smoked lamb meat mixture.
Time to roll out the filo dough and line up the meat mixture.
Roll it all up like a giant filo/meat joint.
Wind it up into a giant spiral to fit some cast iron.
Here's a closeup of the coiled up meat pastry with egg wash and sesame and poppy seeds...ready for the oven.
Here it is right out of the oven.
Cooling on the cutting board.
Served with a garlicky cucumber yogurt salad. I like what the cross-section looks like...this is why I wanted to do the Bosnian spiral version of this dish.
Plated shot.
Deliciously lamby and smokey flavors in a crispy flaky crust. This first attempt was a success! Next time I just need to butter the filo dough a bit more aggressively to make a richer tasting crust. Overall a really simple and tasty dish.
Thanks for looking!
I decided to do a smoked lamb burek, which is a Eastern European meat pastry. You'll find this pastry throughout Eastern Europe, and I find it interesting because of all the different forms it takes depending on where you find it. For this cook, I chose to do the Bosnian burek because it just looked cool.
I started out with some coarsely ground lamb...
I've never smoked ground meat before, so I just spread it out on wire rack and stuck it in the cooker. I was going for a rich reddish coloring on the meat, which I got really easily with cherrywood smoke.
I chopped up the smoked lamb and finished rendering out the fat with some onions. See the red color!
The spice mixture for the meat included parsley, toasted pine nuts, pomegranate molasses, cardamom, allspice, salt, pepper, and tahini.
This was the final smoked lamb meat mixture.
Time to roll out the filo dough and line up the meat mixture.
Roll it all up like a giant filo/meat joint.
Wind it up into a giant spiral to fit some cast iron.
Here's a closeup of the coiled up meat pastry with egg wash and sesame and poppy seeds...ready for the oven.
Here it is right out of the oven.
Cooling on the cutting board.
Served with a garlicky cucumber yogurt salad. I like what the cross-section looks like...this is why I wanted to do the Bosnian spiral version of this dish.
Plated shot.
Deliciously lamby and smokey flavors in a crispy flaky crust. This first attempt was a success! Next time I just need to butter the filo dough a bit more aggressively to make a richer tasting crust. Overall a really simple and tasty dish.
Thanks for looking!
