Armenian · Main
Sini Manti
- Advanced
- 60 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 400 g plain flour
- 1 egg
- 180 ml water
- 8 g salt
- 400 g minced lamb, about 20 percent fat
- 1 onion, about 150 g, grated and squeezed dry
- 20 g flat parsley, finely chopped
- 1 tsp sweet paprika
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 40 g butter, melted
- 1 litre beef or chicken broth
- 400 g matsun or thick yoghurt
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed with salt
- sumac, to finish
Equipment
Sheet pan · Rolling pin · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Kneading doughSalting to draw the water outResting dough: the pause that does the work
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
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
- Work the flour, egg, water and salt into a firm dough, knead until smooth and elastic, and rest it covered for 30 minutes. 30 min
- Mix the lamb with the onion, parsley, paprika, pepper and salt, and keep it cold while you roll.
- Roll the dough to 1 mm, cut 3 cm squares, drop a chickpea of filling on each and pinch two opposite corners together so each one stands open like a little boat.
- Stand the boats shoulder to shoulder in a buttered tray, brush with the melted butter and bake at 200C (400F) until the exposed tips are deep brown and the tray smells toasted, 20 to 25 minutes. 25 min
- Pour boiling broth down the side of the tray until it reaches halfway up the manti, and return it to the oven until the liquid has gone and the tips are still crisp, 8 to 10 minutes. 10 min
- Beat the garlic into the matsun, spoon it over at the table and dust with sumac.
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.
Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes
- Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
- Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
- Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
- That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
- The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.
Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.
Kneading dough 57 recipes
- The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
- The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
- Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
- Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
- After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.
Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
- 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.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.