We recently took a trip to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. A common dish on breakfast buffets and appetizer menus was a flaky savory pastry filled with lamb, beef, or pumpkin called samsa or somsa. Here is my first version of making it at home. I adapted a recipe from Food52.com in which the author went through some extra steps (which I skipped) to try to bake the samsas on a slant to mimic how they are frequently made commercially, which is stuck to the walls of a tandoor oven. (I baked them flat on a baking mat in a pan on top of a heated baking steel.
I made the filling in a relatively time-consuming way, cutting up lean meat and fat from a leg of lamb. The simpler way would have been to use regular ground lamb or 73/27 ground beef. (The filling needs to include fat.) Our conclusion was that the filling was about perfect, except that it was a little too salty. Next time I would propose reducing the fish sauce to 2 Tbs. from 2.5 Tbs.) I just realized that I forgot to include the finely chopped onion in the filling!
The pastry was pretty good, but a bit tough/hard, so I would like to try something else. The simplest way is to use store-bought puff pastry. I am thinking trying to make the next batch with rough puff pastry.
This recipe makes 6 large buns. We ate one each with a salad for dinner. It took about 2.5 hours, which included 2 periods of letting the dough rest.
Stay tuned for more variants!
Dough
280 g. (2 cups) all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. kosher salt
155 g. (2/3 cup) water
70 g. (5 Tbs.) unsalted butter, melted
Filling
11 oz. (310 grams) 30% fat lamb or beef
2.5 Tbs. fish sauce
2 Tbs. chicken stock (or ¼ tsp. chicken Better than Bouillon and 2 Tb. water
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp. ground allspice
¼ tsp. baking soda
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
Combine in the bowl of a stand mixer the flour, salt, and water. Combine roughly with a dough whisk and then mix with the dough hook on low speed until very smooth and elastic. Form the dough into a ball and rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
If using a leg of lamb, cut off 8 oz. of lean lamb and 3 oz. of lamb fat. Cut the lamb fat into ¼ inch dice. Cut the lean lamb into rough chunks.
Put the lean lamb into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to break the lean lamb into a mixture of bigger and smaller pieces and put in a bowl. Add to the bowl the cubes of lamb fat and the fish sauce, chicken broth, cumin, black pepper, and baking soda. Mix by hand until the liquids are absorbed. Just before filling the buns, mix in the finely chopped onion.
On a lightly floured pastry cloth, roll out the dough into a large very thin circle. Brush the dough with the melted butter. Fold the dough into a 1-inch wide ribbon. Fold left 1/3 of the ribbon over the center part of the dough, and then fold the right 1/3 of the dough over the center section. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and flash freeze for 30 minutes until cold to the tough but still pliable.
Preheat the oven to 410 degrees with a baking steel or stone for 30 minutes.
Divide the chilled dough into 6 pieces. Form each piece into a ball and roll each one into a 6-inch circle.
Put 1/6 of the filling in the center of each piece of dough. Fold the 2 o’clock corner over the center of the dough. Then fold the 10 o’clock corner over the center of the dough and pinch the seams to seal. Lastly, fold the 6 o’clock corner upwards and pinch the seam to seal. Place the doughs seam-side down on a piece of baking parchment. Brush with the beaten egg.
Bake for about 25 minutes until golden brown.
Enjoy warm either plain or with a dipping sauce, such as a mixture of 2 parts SriRacha sauce to 1 part ketchup.
Leftovers can be crisped up with 10-15 minutes in a 400 degree oven.