No ratings yet
Thin crisp pastry triangles filled with berbere spiced beef, fried until they crackle. The Horn of Africa cousin of the samosa, thinner and sharper with heat.
Mix the 2.5 cups flour with 3 g of the salt and the 150 ml water into a firm smooth dough, kneading for 5 minutes. Cover and rest for 20 minutes.
Fry the chopped onion in 2 tablespoons of the oil for 6 minutes, add the 10 g garlic for 1 minute, then the 350 g beef and cook for 8 minutes, breaking it up finely, until dry rather than wet.
Stir in the berbere, the ground ginger and the rest of the salt, cook 1 minute more, then stir in the cilantro and cool completely before filling.
Roll the dough out very thin, to about 2 mm, and cut into long strips roughly 8 cm wide. Ethiopian sambusa pastry is noticeably thinner than a samosa shell, which is what makes it shatter rather than flake.
Put a spoon of filling at one end of a strip and fold the corner over to make a triangle, continuing the triangular fold down the strip, then seal the end with a dab of water.
Heat the oil in a deep pot to 175°C, filling it no more than half way. Fry the sambusa in batches for 3 to 4 minutes until deep golden and crisp, then drain on a rack.
