Tunisian Cuisine

Passport & Plate - Tunisian Brik with Ground Beef

Tunisia | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
250g ground beef
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
1 red chili, finely chopped
4 tablespoons coriander
50g grated cheese
4 eggs
4 Malsouka sheets
Vegetable oil for frying
Salt and black pepper

 

How to prepare this recipe
To prepare the filling, pour the olive oil in a pan and added the ground beef, the onion, the garlic, the chili, the coriander and half of the parsley. Mix all together and add some water. Season with salt and pepper and stir well in order to avoid blocs of meats. Cover the pan and leave it on a medium heat for about 5 minutes.
Let the mixture cool, then added the other half of parsley and correct the seasoning.
In a skillet, pour the vegetable oil until it reaches a depth of about 2cm. Heat the oil to a medium temperature. Fold the Malsouka to form a square. Put some of the filling in the center of the square and added some cheese. Press a well into the center of the filling and place a raw egg in it. Carefully fold over the square to form a triangle and slide it down into the frying oil. Fry the Brik and turn it from time to time until both sides are slightly brown. Drain the Brick on paper towel. Serve hot with a salad or a soup.

 

The story behind this recipe
Tunisian Brik can be classified as starter but the story my grandmother used to tell us, her grandchildren, when we were kids drove me to choose it out of all the Tunisian dishes.
We call it Brik in our dialect and it consists of a thin round shape pastry called Malsouka, folded in such a way to contain different ingredients as stuffing and also one egg in a pocket. The traditional shape is triangular, obtained by folding the pastry into a square in the middle of which the stuffing and the egg will be placed, after which two opposite angles are joined to form the triangle. Finally the whole thing is deep-fried and served hot.
We mainly eat it during Ramadan at dinner, when breaking the fast. Some prefer to eat it along with a spicy salad or a hot soup which is mandatory every day, even when Ramadan happens in summer. Others prefer to eat just the Brik. Some families cannot imagine a Ramadan dinner without Brik and would serve it every day. However, in my family we only make it from time to time as we believe it is not healthy on a daily basis.
The most important ingredient for a successful Brik is Malsouka, the thin pastry skin made from flour, salt and water. When she was young my grandmother used to prepare the pastry herself. This requires a lot of patience and experience. This is precisely the reason why most people now buy the industrial pastry in the supermarket. However, during Ramadan you can still find the homemade Malsouka either in some street markets or from an individual who is known by word of mouth. It is always funny when families gather and start to praise the merits of the Malsouka provider they found, as well as the quality of his product; people would start fighting in order to get his contact information. Everybody wants the best Malsouka in town!
The origins of the Brik are unsure. Some say we inherited it from the Ottomans and some say it came from the Berbers.
In Tunisia there is another kind of Brik called the Jewish Brik. It differs from the normal Brik as the pastry is made of flattened dough. People can still find it in some popular restaurants in La Goulette, a town in the northern suburb of Tunis where a big Jewish community used to live.
Now let's get to the point of why I chose this easy but delicious piece of Tunisian food. I grew up at my grandparents place and my grandmother played an important role in my upbringing. She used to tell me Tunisian folktales and stories. One of them was that in traditional families, when a girl is to be married, one of the ways to identify a good future husband was by testing how he would eat the Brik. The Brik is made in a way to keep the egg yolk runny. The potential husband has to eat the Brik without spilling the egg to prove that he comes from a good family and that he deserves the bride.