Douglas St and Hunter St - Semolina Pastry

Today Cecily and Amanda were cooking Makrout, a Maroccan treat, at Hunter Street. This is another simple and unusual pastry - 3 ingredients, no rolling and unlike most pastries it likes to be handled.

Makrout is a a filled semolina pastry. For the pastry mix 1 cup of semolina with 1/3 cup of melted butter and just enough rosewater of orange flower blossom water to be able to form the mix into a stiff pastry. The pastry is easiest to handle if left to sit for 20 min while making the filling.

Filling could be any mix of dates, apricots, figs, almonds, pistacho nuts etc whizzed with a little sugar, cinnamon and some rosewater or orange flower blossom water - again this needs to be a thick paste. Make small balls of this mix. Take a tsp of the pastry, flatten into a disc and shape around the ball. Bake at 170C for 15-20 min until firm. Roll in icing while hot.

Any leftover filling can be made into fruit balls by rolling in coconut.

This pastry could be used in the same way for savoury options with fillings such as spicy mashed chickpeas or meat filling. The filled pastry can also be shallow or deep fried.




Add caption