In this video Trevor Salloum demonstrates how to make Lebanese Spinach tarts based on the method learned from his mother Helen Salloum and the aid of the cookbook “A Taste of Lebanon” by Mary Salloum. Here is a link to a previous video on making Fatayer with Helen Salloum: https://youtu.be/cFXK2X-cIas?si=mai98_JX4-WqiNp9
I just thought I’d share with you how I make um feta or spinach tarts. Some people use them with meat or potatoes and carrots, but I tend to make them with spinach. You can see down here what they look like. Sort of a triangular shape using regular bread dough. I I like to use organic whole wheat and unbleached flour. And I’m using the recipe from my cousin Mary Salum’s cookbook called A Taste of Lebanon. If any of you are watching this and you have Lebanese mothers, I’m sure that your mothers will make them much better than I. I was taught by my mother. She’s much better was a much better cook than I am. But uh I want to carry on the tradition. I love the food. So it’s a chance for me to still enjoy the food even though my mother is now 96 and doesn’t make it anymore. So, I tend to make them for her sometimes. So, yeah, let me show you just basically what happens. So, these are ones that are ready to go into the oven. These ones here, I just put a usually a little piece of plastic bag over them just to keep them from drying out a little bit. And you can see here is the filling. Uh done about half of it already. Filling is a mixture of spinach, onions, uh parsley. I put red peppers in it as well. Red and yellow orange peppers. Um I thought about putting mushrooms, but I never tried that this time. Maybe next time. And lots has some spices in it like, you know, salt, pepper, um mint, fresh mint or dried mint. And uh yeah, I I actually did a mixture of fresh parsley and dried parsley because I didn’t have a lot of fresh. So you can see here I’ve cut some of the dough. And the dough is still rising. Uh, and so just basically make like a little pancake. And I use a little bit of extra flour here just so it doesn’t stick to the table. Hopefully you can see that. And then we’re going to put some filling in. Usually couple tablespoons is enough. So, I’m kind of like basically guessing or estimating the amount of filling that I use. Uh, and sometimes I’ll have some filling left over at the end. And if I do, then I’ll just, you know, maybe fry it up with an egg or something and a day or two. Uh, yeah. Usually if I have uh extra dough, I’ll just, you know, try to make more. So, basically, this is what it looks like. Uh you can see here, just placing them on the tray. I usually do about 24 at a time. Cover them up a bit. Put this over here. The dough takes about h 40 40 60 minutes to rise in a warm place. So what I usually do is I make the dough first and then I’ll make the filling while the dough is rising over that 40 or 60 minute period. There is a video out there if you want to do a search of Helen Salum. I once took a vid did a video of my mother making these back in the day. So this is the update next generation. Okay. And I like to use organic spinach from the store. It’s usually already washed, so that makes it kind of nice. Comes in a little bin. 11 oz there. Pretty quick, eh? That’s what they look like. Yeah, it’s just, you know, practice. I probably done made them Oh, I usually probably make them twice a year and then I freeze them. Maybe eat them for dinner the first night and then after that freeze them. So, they’re pretty forgiving. I mean, you can if you o overdo it with the amount of filling or you underdo it. Yeah, it’s still make adjustments. So, but basically what you’re doing is sort of like a samosa only samosas use a different kind of dough. This is using regular bread dough. Sometimes it some of the filling will try to escape and I’ll use a bit of flour just to help seal it. And I don’t know if I mentioned that, but I do also flour the the trays before I put them the tire on the tray is I will so you can see the flour here on the tray. And then what I might do is take some a brush with a bit of butter or some oil and brush them after they’ve been baked so that they don’t have all this dry flour sticking to them. Pull them out of the oven. The actual temperature was 400 degrees Fahrenheit and that’s for 20 to 25 minutes. I put them in for 23 minutes. And at the very end, what I did was I put it on broil um for about 2 minutes on high broil just to get them a little bit brown. And they turned out actually quite well. Um all of them stayed together. None of them fell apart, which is a miracle. And what I usually do is I take a little bit of uh olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, and just, you know, paint them a little bit wherever there there’s flour. And sometimes, because I use flour, so they don’t stick to the um tray, you might just, you know, whisk off some of the extra flour with a brush that’s moistened in olive oil. Or you can use butter or ghee as well. I’ve done that before, too. And then they’re pretty much all done. And I just put them in this bowl here. So you can see just removing some of the excess flour that’s used to prevent them from sticking. And they’re ready to eat. Although probably most of them are going to be frozen and a few given away. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that. Oh, one more thing I want to mention. This was the uh the book that I always use. This is one of my favorites for Lebanese cooking and it was by my dear cousin Mary Salum from Calgary and it has excellent recipes. They’re all delicious and uh yeah, so if you’re interested in Lebanese cooking or making fetire grape leaf rolls, Lebanese chicken, whatever, excellent book. Okay, enjoy it.