Recently I taught a Food & Memory Writing Workshop. I based it on my grandmother’s cheese sambusek. The memories it evoked are of an Iraqi Jewish world that once existed; of my grandmother’s (and her whole family, along with over 120,000 Iraqi Jews’) uprooting and displacement to the refugee camps in Israel, and then her family’s immigration 16 years later to Sydney, where I was born.
How far the cheese sambusek travelled, how far it still travels as I scribbled down the recipe on hotel notepaper when I visited my grandmother in LA many years ago, and baked it for my children in Johannesburg. Now I bake it in Jerusalem. I tell my children about my Nana Aziza. I relish how they eat it. I hope they are tasting the love of her hands, and the deep roots of where they come from as Babylonian Jews.
Cheese Sambusek Recipe
So it’s always dodgy sharing my grandmother’s recipes because there are no exact measurements. I therefore adapted Daisy Iny’s sambusek basic dough base (The Best of Baghdad Cooking: With Treats from Tehran), which will work for chickpea sambusek, the sweet walnut/almond sambusek, and Ba’aba Tamar (round date cookies) too.
Dough Ingredients
7g dry yeast
1 cup lukewarm water
150g butter melted on double boiler
2 3/4 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
pinch of ground fennel seeds
Dough Method – Soak yeast in cup of lukewarm water for 10-15 minutes. Melt butter on double boiler. Mix together dry ingredients: flours, salt and crushed fennel. Add the yeast mixture and melted butter. Wet palms and knead gently with hands until smooth (handle as little as possible). Cover with a wet cloth and let it rise until double in bulk for about an hour.
Cheese Filling Ingredients (my rough measurements)
Ricotta cheese (1 tub – 250g)
Cheddar cheese (1 cup) (Make sure it’s a tasty cheddar with the right salt content. You can also use a salty cheese. There is a salty, white cheese called Iraqi cheese in Jerusalem’s Shuk Machane Yehuda which is perfect for sambusek.)
Mozarella cheese (1 1/2 cups)
1 cup whole wheat flour (I always leave the flour in the filling out)
3-4 eggs
Method
Preheat the oven 200 C/400F.
Mix the filling ingredients together.
When the dough is ready roll into small balls, and with a rolling pin flatten into circles. Place teaspoon of filling in the middle. (Note I love the cheese and tend to overfill.) Fold it over so it’s like a half moon and press the edges down with your fingers.
You can brush with egg if you like. I don’t think my grandmother did.
Bake for about 10-15 minutes until golden.
Sambusek can be stored in an airtight container, and keeps well in the freezer. I toast it from the freezer so it’s lovely and crispy for my kids.
Note: Daisy says her portion makes 16 sambusek, but they must be tiny. I double the dough mixture (not the filling) and it makes about 25-30.
And please try it – it’s much easier than it sounds. I am scared of dough, but this recipe really works!
All comments are so welcome as I navigate these recipes I need all the feedback I can get.
