Picnic Week Recipe of the Day: Alice Hart's Brik with a Roast Tomato Sauce
Brik, a close cousin of the borek, boureki, bourekas, byrek, and burek (I could go on…), is rooted in Algeria and Tunisia. As you can imagine, there are myriad variations, but the main premise of fried or baked pastry enclosing a filling remains true.
Traditionally, each brik is fried to order in hot oil until crisp. Gossamer-fine pastry is wrapped around a simple raw filling, including a fresh egg dropped into the centre before sealing.
The challenge with picnic food lies in the sitting about; sogginess and greasiness is unwelcome and that often means fried foods will be sub-optimal by the time you come to eat them. In my, cheerfully inauthentic, version, an egg and olive oil glaze turns the pastry crisp and golden and that crisp quality should hold for a good few hours.
Enough time to reach your picnic spot and eat in the sun. I’d encourage you to crack a small egg into each pastry just before wrapping if you like the idea. I do and enjoyed the spoils very much when recipe testing but, in the end, the egg got dropped because more of my willing testers plumped for the eggless version.
Brik pastry is available in Turkish shops and larger Waitrose stores but, if it isn’t forthcoming, use filo. I daresay the fillings would work a charm in a shortcrust or puff pastry wrapper too.
Photography by Emma Lee
Makes 10 of each type
Prep 40 minutes per batch of 10
Cook 1 hour 20 minutes (feta filling) – 1 hour 45 minutes (lamb filling)
10 tbsp olive oil
4 eggs, lightly beaten
20 brik pastry sheets
For the lamb filling
550g lamb neck, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 5cm pieces
1 large onion, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
300g unpeeled, waxy potatoes,
cut into 1–2cm cubes
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 1/2 tbsp capers
large handful of chopped parsley
For the feta filling
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion, diced
300g unpeeled, waxy potatoes, cut into 1–2cm cubes
1 tsp cumin seeds
250g spinach, washed and any coarse stalks removed
100g feta, crumbled
1/2 tbsp capers
large handful of chopped parsley
no salt!
Preheat the oven to 160C/fan 140C/325F/gas mark 3. For the lamb filling, combine all the ingredients except the capers and parsley in a small roasting tin, season, cover tightly with foil and cook for 11/2 hours or so, until incredibly tender. A fork should meet no real resistance when you use it to roughly shred the lamb. Let cool, stir in the capers and parsley and adjust the seasoning to taste.
For the vegetarian filling, combine the olive oil, onion, potato and cumin seeds in a small roasting tin or dish. Cover tightly with foil and roast for one hour, at the same temperature as the lamb, until the potatoes are tender. Immediately stir in the spinach and re-cover with foil. Return to the oven for three to five minutes to wilt the spinach, stir in the remaining ingredients and set aside to cool.
The fillings may be made up to two days in advance and kept chilled. Bring up to room temperature before using. When ready to finish the briks, preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/350F/gas mark 4. Line four large baking sheets with nonstick baking parchment. Whisk the olive oil with the eggs and 2 tbsp water in a bowl; have a pastry brush at the ready.
Lay a sheet of pastry on a work surface, peeling it from its paper backing. Brush lightly with the egg mixture, then lay a heaped tablespoon of your chosen filling in the top right of the circle. Fold the pastry over in half and then again into a quarter to enclose the filling. Brush more egg over the edges and outside, to seal and glaze.
Space the briks out on the baking sheets, keeping the side where the filling is more visible facing upwards. This is to ensure that the underside crisps up, protected as it is by an extra couple of pastry layers. Repeat to make 10 briks of each type. Bake for about 15 minutes, until golden and crisp-edged.
Cool on the baking sheets, then pack carefully in layers of greaseproof paper. Transport the sauce (below) in a separate pot.
ROAST TOMATO SAUCE
1kg ripe tomatoes, halved
pinch of caster sugar
good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
The panzanella recipe in this chapter already features roast tomatoes, cooked at a higher temperature and for less time, but gluts are there to be taken advantage of and this blueprint sauce is endlessly versatile, ready to be altered as you wish. The long and gentle roasting concentrates the tomato’s late-summer flavour enough for it to shine unadorned, but should you wish to enhance it, try whole garlic cloves – added to the roasting tin with their skins on – to be squeezed in after cooking. Herbs such as thyme, oregano and rosemary torn in beforehand will add depth, as will cumin and coriander seeds, chilli, smoked paprika and even chipotle chillies.
Instead of crushing it, puree the sauce if you like, with or without basil or mint. The tomato skins may be removed after cooking for a more refined finish.
Preheat the oven to 150C/fan 130C/300F/gas mark 2. Sit the tomato halves snugly in a roasting tin, cut sides up. Scatter the sugar over with salt and pepper, drizzle generously with olive oil and roast for one hour, until the tomatoes have shrivelled slightly. Use a fork or a potato masher to crush the tomatoes down, forming a rustic sauce. Keep, chilled, for up to five days. Pack into lidded pots and use as a sauce for the briks, above.
This recipe and text have been taken from Friends at my Table: A Year of Eating, Drinking and Making Merry by Alice Hart, published by Quadrille Publishing, £18.99
© Please do not reproduce this material without the permission of the publisher
