Sfeeha (Open-face Meat Pies)

I am laughing as I type this blog post because my mom is so tired of me making & eating sfeeha. I just love them! Whenever I make them, I end up with enough sfeeha to get me through the week, and I *will* eat them for every single meal. Everyone has that food in their life, right? The one you will never tire of eating? This is mine, and I'm so excited to share them with you!

Standard Ingredients

Makes 15-20 sfeeha

For the dough:

• I buy Rhodes brand frozen Yeast Dinner Rolls, found at most grocery stores.

For the meat mixture:

• 1 pound ground beef (I suggest 85/15).

• 1 pound ground lamb.

• 1 cup finely diced sweet peppers, or ~2 peppers. I use a mix of orange & red.

• 3/4 cup finely diced white onion.

• 3/4 cup finely diced roma tomatoes.

• 4 Tablespoons tahini.

• 1/3 cup pomegranate molasses. (If you don't have molasses, use 3 Tablespoons of lemon juice.)

• 3 Tablespoons olive oil.

• 3 Tablespoons black pepper.

• 1/4 cup Arab Seven Spice mix.

• 1 Tablespoon salt.

• 1 Tablespoon ground ginger.

• Optional: 1/2 head finely chopped garlic.

• Optional: 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley.

• Optional (& recommended): 1 finely diced jalapeño.

Ultimately, add spices to your taste, and keep in mind the Arab Seven Spice & black pepper are the primary flavors.

Possible Substitutions

• Dough: Any brand of yeasted dough, frozen or fresh, store bought or homemade.

• Lamb: Use only ground beef.

• Roma Tomatoes: Any tomato that's firm enough to dice.

• Pomegranate Molasses: Use 3 Tablespoons of lemon juice instead.

Directions

1. Finely dice all the sweet peppers, onion, tomatoes, and, if you're using them, the parsley, jalapeño, & garlic. Reserve a small handful of chopped parsley.

2. Mix the veggies from step one together with the 4 Tablespoons of tahini, 3 Tablespoons of olive oil, 1/3 cup of pomegranate molasses, 3 Tablespoons of black pepper, 1/4 cup of Arab Seven Spice, 1 Tablespoon salt, and 1 Tablespoon ground ginger.

3. Once the veggies, liquids, & spices are well mixed, add the 1 pound of ground beef and 1 pound of ground lamb and use your hands to mix them until everything is well incorporated throughout the meat. Don't work the meat too much.

4. Once mixed, let the meat mixture sit, covered, in the refrigerator for a couple hours.

5. With the meat marinating, let's prep the dough balls by thawing & rising them. When using frozen dough, this usually this takes a few hours at room temperature. If you're in a relative rush, preheat your oven to its lowest setting and turn it off. After its been off for 15 minutes or so, stick the dough balls in the oven to rise. The dough balls should be spaced out on a baking sheet, a bit oiled, and covered with a light towel. Using this technique, they should be risen within 1-2 hours.

   1. Make sure you're only thawing the amount of dough you intend to use. The standard bag of rolls comes with 36, and this recipe makes 15-20 meat patties, depending on how big and/or thick you make them. If you're unsure how many to thaw, I'd go for 20---any leftover dough can be used to make an easy dessert or another type of pie. My go-to is banana slices, brown sugar, and nuts inside the folded dough, so it resembles an empanada, and baked until the dough is golden brown.

6. Once the dough is risen and ready to use, flatten the balls out into circles, about halfway to the final size you want. For me, I like my sfeeha to be about 5-6 inches across, so I'll flatten them to about 3 inches across in the first flattening. The wider they are, the crispier the crust will be. Let the flattened dough balls rest for a few minutes.

7. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

8. Grab the meat mixture. You'll see water has separated from the mixture. That's normal. I drain it because it's mostly veggie water. You could also mix it back in, but I would generally advise against this.

9. Go back to your flattened dough balls and flatten them out a bit more. They'll have shrunken a bit while resting, and now we want to flatten them until they're about 4 inches across.

10. Take ~4 tablespoons of meat & flatten into a patty the size of the dough, so about 4 inches across. Place the meat patty on top of the dough & flatten it into the dough, leaving a small edge. The dough will and should get a bit wider, and that's part of the process. If you don't flatten it into the dough, it'll sit on top of the dough and could fall off after baking.

11. Bake at 425° for 20-25 minutes, until the dough is a nice golden color. I then broil for 3-4 minutes.

12. Top with the reserved fresh, chopped parsley (dried parsley flakes). Please salt it to your taste.

Sahtein!

Freezing the meat mixture: as I noted in my introduction, I make sfeeha a lot. I decided to try freezing them for an easy meal option. To do so, I take 4 Tablespoons of the fresh meat mixture and form it into a 4 inch patty. I place the patty on parchment paper, and then stack together however many sfeeha I'd want to cook at once, usually 6 of them. Each patty is separated by parchment paper. Then I tightly wrap the stack in plastic wrap, followed by aluminum foil. Finally, I place the foiled stack in a freezer bag or container.

When I'm ready to use the patties, I'll put it in the fridge to thaw overnight, then follow steps 5-12 from above. If you notice water came off the patties when they thawed, that's normal. Just drain it off---no need to reincorporate it into the meat patties.

The frozen patties should stay good for at least two months, if well wrapped.