Skip to main content

Nabila's Briouat with turkey

Tuesday, February 24 2015

Savory Briouat with turkey

Nabilia and I made this dish several times together, and it's scrumptious. It's a labor because of all the folding of the triangles filled with the vermicelli and the other ingredients, but with two people, the time goes by more quickly. Since briouat is a snack, we freeze the unfried briouat, and it keeps for a long time. Just take it out and fry up a few when it's time to entertain (not much oil, just a little goes a long way)...I enjoy serving these to the students who come to the weekly lunches at the American Language Center when I'm the host, and when I have the time to prepare it. 


Nabila preparing a few briouat for snacks

The finished product before frying




Ingredients:
¾ kg                turkey / chicken, cubed
1                      red onion, chopped 
2-3 tbsp           olive oil
1/2 tsp             pepper
1/2 tsp             salt

1/4 kg bag       clear vermicilli

5-7                  carrots
1 tbsp              olive oil
½   tsp             salt
¼   tsp             pepper

2 Dh                coriander and parsely, chopped
1 Tbsp             harissa, about 2 tbsp, taste because it is hot
Dh                sliced green olives, about 1.5 cups
½  tsp           cumin 
½  tsp           paprika
1 lg cube         grated chicken boullion 

1 kg                 waraqa (filo dough) about 20 dirham

  • Brown turkey in oil, chopped onion, pepper and salt.
  • Pour boiling water over vermicilli to cook.  Prepare by chopping strands into about 3 inch sections. 
  • Grate carrots then place in a pan along with oil, salt and pepper. Cook briefly  then place in a large bowl with remaining ingredients. Mix well.
  • Mix in the parsley, harissa, green olives, cumin, paprika, the grated boullion and finally vermicilli then turkey.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nabila's Kitchen: Chicken Bastilla

Bastilla (بَسطيلة) Moroccan sweet and savory chicken pie Do you want something that's as satisfying to the eye at as it delicious to taste? Try this bastilla. I've asked Nabila to make it at least half a dozen times, but never found the time to write down the recipe. Lissa & Natasha are a mother and daughter who stayed at Dar Al Hajj for a week and a half during the beginning of Ramadan, and we agreed to have the bastilla for ftour, the breaking of the fast. This year (2014) the month of Ramadan began only a week after the summer solstice, so ftour, the breaking of the fast, did not begin until around 8 P.M. Lissa and Natasha were not fasting, but I was, at least at the time. So, thanks, ladies, for agreeing to delay your meal, and thanks for writing down the recipe, and thanks as always to Nabila for doing what you do so brilliantly. Bastilla, with its dusting of powdered sugar and cinnamon over a filo-encrusted chicken pie filled with a savory egg roux and crushe...

Thin-crust pizza

I had a 20-year career in telecommunications engineering in my thirties and forties, at times working alongside an Italian-American guy from New York. Bob had deeply set eyes and a hangdog look, at odds with his pleasant manner. On Fridays, he'd show up at the office with a homemade pizza that he called his "garbage pie”—baked dough, sauce, cheese, and whatever leftovers were in his fridge. Pizza is a dish of humble origins, so when it became known that Margherita of Savoy, the first queen of unified Italy, loved pizza and often asked her kitchen staff to prepare it, the dish was elevated to an honored position, and the Pizza Margherita, in the colors of the Italian flag, was named for her. On a personal level, some things   about this dish are inviolable.   I’ll never let barbecued chicken or sliced pineapple  near it. Or broccolli or cannned tuna. That being said, it’s probably the most bastardized, personalized dish in the world, but I keep it simple.  I once...

Moroccan Seafood Bastilla

Moroccan seafood bastilla is a rich mixture of shrimp, calamari, and whitefish, seasoned with herbs and spices, fluffed out with cellophane noodles, and wrapped in "warqa" (Arabic word for "paper") a Moroccan filo dough made fresh daily in the souks, the large marketplaces filled with independent vendors that are in any Moroccan city of any size. In coastal cities like Essaouira and Agadir, bastilla is available in the souks in individual serving sizes .   But wherever I tried it, it seemed a little underwhelming. There was a potentially great dish there, but the flavors were muted.  It seemed strange that the seafood bastilla should be as bland as it was. After all, its cousin, chicken bastilla, albeit with a much different set of ingredients and spice mixture, is such a special occasion dish that I'd ask Nabila, our housekeeper in Fes, to make it whenever there were guests.  The typical seafood bastilla contained ingredients that I felt blunted the flavor of t...