Puff pastry ground beef roulade was dad’s dish, meaning a dish that dad would prepare. He called it the lazy man’s bourekas. Usually, the kitchen was mom’s kingdom, but in times that dad took over the cooking, he used to prepare his signature dishes, and one of them was the roulade.
Instead of preparing a commercial amount of single bourekas, and believe me, with five voracious children, Mom would bake bourekas in a quantity of a medium size bakery. Dad upgraded the system and would make one big long bourekas. This does not mean that we didn’t devour the pastries before they could cool down. Long bourekas, single bourekas, round bourekas, triangle, square, cheese filling, potato filling, meat... we didn’t discriminate. We finished them all.
Ingredients
1 package puff (pastry use one sheet)
1 lb ground beef
1 onion diced
3 garlic cloves minced
1 potato finely grated
½ tsp baharat
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
4 thyme sprigs
2 TBS pine nuts
2 TBS olive oil for frying
1 egg for brushing
Sesame seeds
Heat the olive oil in a deep nonstick pan over medium high heat. Add onion and fry to golden. Add garlic and fry one more minute. Add ground beef and spices. Mix well and cook until the meat change it’s color to brown.
Defrost one leaf of puff pastry. Heat oven to 180 C/350 F. In a deep bowl mix the meat, grated potato and pine nuts.
Over floured surface, cut the puff pastry in half and roll each half to a 16x10 inch rectangle (one leaf makes 2 roulades). With a sharp knife cut slots on the long side of the rectangle, 3 inch deep (about ⅓ of the rectangle) and 1 inch apart. Place half of the filling in the middle of the rectangle, and fold the stripes crisscross until all the filling is covered. Brush with washed egg, spread sesame seed on top and bake for 30 min until top is golden.
