The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Uzbek & the Silk Road · Starter

Qiymali Somsa

  • Advanced
  • 50 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · earthy · nutty-toasted Leads with richness that coats and comforts, an earthy, grounding base, closing toasted and warm.

Ingredients

  • 350 g plain flour
  • 180 ml warm water
  • 6 g salt for the dough
  • 70 g lamb tail fat or butter, soft but not melted, for laminating
  • 400 g lamb shoulder, hand chopped into 5 mm dice
  • 400 g onions, finely diced
  • 80 g lamb tail fat, in 5 mm dice, for the filling
  • 2 tsp cumin seed, crushed
  • 1.5 tsp coarse black pepper
  • 9 g salt for the filling
  • 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tsp water
  • 2 tsp sesame or nigella seeds

Equipment

Sheet pan · Rolling pin

The skills inside

Chilling to firm: the fridge as binderKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasShaping by hand

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg · sesame

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Knead a firm dough from the flour, salt and water, rest it 30 minutes, then roll it as thin as newsprint, smear the soft fat right to the edges, roll into a tight log and chill 20 minutes until the fat is set but not hard. 30 min
  2. Chop the meat by hand and mix with an equal weight of onion, the diced fat, cumin, pepper and salt; it should look wet and loose, not like a paste.
  3. Cut the log into 12, stand each piece on its cut face and roll out to a 12 cm round so the spiral of layers shows on the surface.
  4. Fill each round, fold up into a triangle and seal the seams hard, then set them seam side down, brush with yolk and scatter the seeds.
  5. Bake on a steel or heavy tray preheated to 250C (480F) for 25 to 30 minutes, until the layers have visibly lifted apart and the base is deep brown and rigid enough to knock on. 30 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder 48 recipes

  • It went cold before it was handled any further, and it went in spread flat and covered rather than as a warm mass that insulates its own centre.
  • It is cold through rather than cold at the edge: tested at the middle it is as firm as it is at the rim.
  • It holds its shape unsupported; it can be cut, portioned, rolled or lifted without slumping, tearing, or sticking to the hands.
  • The fat in it has gone solid: it feels firm and waxy to the fingers rather than greasy and yielding.
  • It survives the step it was chilled for, going into heat or a coating or a mould still holding its form rather than collapsing the moment it is touched.

Where it goes wrong It was given twenty minutes instead of the hours it needed, so it is firm at the rim and soft at the core: it slumps out of shape as it is portioned, and everything made from it spreads or breaks apart in the pan.

Shaping by hand 85 recipes

  • The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
  • Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
  • The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
  • Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
  • They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.

Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.

At the Table

The Pour
Syrah or Grenache/GSM
Also Right
Malbec
From the Taps
Porter
Zero-Proof
Pomegranate spritz

Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Qiymali Somsa The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Uzbek & the Silk Road kitchen