Moroccan Pastries and the Curses of Filo Dough

About a year ago, I purchased a Moroccan cookbook, breaking my cardinal rule against buying specialized cookbooks that I won’t use on a regular basis. However, this particular book, despite its impracticality, included a recipe for b’stilla, a sweet and savory pie of shredded, spiced chicken and almond paste wrapped in delicate warka pastry, with which I had been obsessed since a dinner many years ago at a Moroccan restaurant in Santa Barbara. My roommates and I expressed such delight over the pie that the chef actually sent us a second b’stilla to take home at the end of the night. The memory of that fabulous meal (which in no way was influenced by our very hot waiter enticing me to try belly dancing with him) has remained so strong that I bought the book for this one recipe without a thought.

Other than one laborious but rewarding evening spent making said b’stilla, the cookbook has sat on my shelf unused, a mocking reminder of my rule-breaking lapse. So when I needed inspiration for New Year’s Eve hors d’oeuvres, I pulled it out, determined to add a Moroccan recipe or two to my list. I wanted appetizers that would be a little out of the ordinary yet appeal to a range of palates. I settled on two savory pastries, one cheese and one meat, folded in dough triangles and fried golden brown. The cookbook offered a recipe for traditional warka dough, but I opted for the safer and less time-consuming option of pre-made filo dough.

The morning of the party, I put together both fillings, starting with the meat. The recipe called for sautéing 8 ounces ground beef in a skillet with 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, and 1 teaspoon ground coriander. I instinctively doubled the amount of garlic, but a sample of the browned meat still tasted bland. After consultation with my “sous chef,” I realized the recipe lacked salt and pepper, so I added pinches of both. This brought out the other spices in the meat and I put the combination aside to cool.

The cheese filling included 8 ounces of goat cheese, ¼ cup butter (because there’s not enough fat in goat cheese, apparently), 2 tablespoons fresh thyme, salt and pepper to taste, and 1 lightly beaten egg, all mixed well in a large bowl. As I gathered the ingredients, I realized in the craze of party preparations, I’d neglected to buy fresh thyme. With no time to head back to the store, I turned to the internet for a solution.

While several websites suggested I could substitute 1 teaspoon of dried thyme for every tablespoon of fresh thyme in the recipe (http://bit.ly/f3m4gX, http://anse.rs/hBM0SI) at least one said this should only be done in recipes that called for a long cooking time to break down the woodsy dried leaves (http://bit.ly/if5SRx). Leery of serving my guests pastries concealing small wood chips, I considered omitting the thyme altogether but feared the pastries would be dull, especially given the very mild goat cheese I’d purchased. I settled on 1 teaspoon of dried thyme, an amount that dispersed well through the cheese mixture but presumably wouldn’t turn it fibrous if the leaves didn’t soften during the short frying process.

I began assembling the triangles late in the afternoon and was almost thwarted by a filo disaster of epic proportions. To make the pastries, I had to separate 10 sheets of dough and cut each sheet into 4 strips. However, when separating the sheets, always a delicate process with filo, I quickly ripped through an alarming number. Afraid of running out of dough before I separated a single sheet intact, I again turned to the internet for help. The problem stemmed from my thawing method. The directions on the box called for thawing the dough either over 24 hours in the refrigerator or over 2 hours at room temperature. In my party planning rush, I had opted for the latter. Unfortunately, all the filo dough tips I found online insisted that the dough really needed to be defrosted in the fridge to maintain the appropriate balance of moisture in the dough for the sheets to separate.

Sous chef came to the rescue, suggesting I cut the dough into strips first and then attempt to separate the individual strips from the larger sheets. This method, combined with spritzing the dough lightly with water and a lip-biting amount of concentration, produced enough mostly untorn strips to make the pastries. With that Herculean task accomplished, I placed a spoonful of filling on one end of each strip, folding the corner down to form a triangle, and then folding the triangle at right angles to the end of the strip. The end result was a pile of pastries that looked like the paper footballs my brother and I used to make as children but that would hopefully prove tastier.

I left frying the pastries until right before the guests arrived, so the pastries would be crisp and warm as the party started. The triangles quickly turned a lovely golden brown in about an inch of oil and I soon had two plates piled high with crisp, savory pastries.

In the end, the beef pastries were a bit of a disappointment. Although tasty, they were a bit dry and lacked the complex sweet yet spicy flavor unique to Moroccan cuisine. If I make them again, I’ll increase the original spices and perhaps add some cinnamon and onion to the mixture.

The cheese pastries proved much more successful. The crispy, flaky exterior contrasted well with the creamy, soft filling. The dried thyme didn’t interfere with the texture at all and gave the filling a lemony, earthy flavor that combined perfectly with the soft tang of the goat cheese, which in turn was made richer by the addition of the butter (despite my concerns over the added fat, which its probably best not to contemplate). They also paired remarkably well with champagne. My guests seemed to agree, as the plate of cheese pastries emptied almost as fast as the bottles of champagne, helping us all ring in the new year in good spirits and with a full belly.