Cookfolio

Ingredients Filling
200gr minced beef
1 onion
1 tbs olive oil
1 beef cube
1 teaspoon tabil
fresh ground black pepper to taste
fresh coriander leaves

Method
Fry off onion in the olive oil, add the minced beef and brown off the meat. Add the rest of the ingredients and leave to cool. Make a quantity of the Msmen mix. After flattening the msmen ball place a small portion of the meat filling in the centre. Fold the msmen and dry cook the bread until done.

There is a big Morocco community in The Netherlands and during the Ramadan they sell delicious cakes and pastries. These Butcher shops are more like mini supermarkets and carry all sorts of Arabic treats. After years of only buying Msmen during the Ramadan and several failures in the kitchen a friend taught me how she made Msmen. A lot of recipes listed dried yeast but she stated ‘yeast is for people who cannot cook’.

Ingredients
250 gr flour
250 gr semolina flour (finely ground)
extra 50 gr semolina flour
luke warm water
salt
250 gr butter
sunflower oil

Method
Melt the butter in a pan, add some sunflower oil and put aside until later. Mix the flour, semolina and salt together in a big mixing bowl, add water slowly. Work the dough kneading it for at least 5 mins. or until it becomes elastic. Pinch small balls out, dipping in the butter and put aside, this will prevent the dough from drying out.

Make sure you have enough room to work, a big surface to flatten out the dough. Put a spoonful of the melted butter on your work surface and grab a ball. Flatten it with the palm of your hand and add another spoonful of butter on top. Now slowly flatten the dough out with a circling palm action until it’s stretched out and thin.

Sprinkle a light layer of semolina over the circle. Fold the top part of the dough over 2/3 of the circle, then fold the botton 1/3 up and then fold both sides in, it’s sort of like a envelop.

Before cooking the Msmen it needs to be flattened, heat a frying pan on a medium heat, and cook the Msmen using no extra oil. Turn over when the Msmen has turned light brown. Repeat for all of the balls and serve warm with small dipping balls of olive oil and honey.