Hawawshi (Egyptian Spiced Meat Stuffed Pita)

Ingredients

• 500 g ground beef
• 1 onion, very finely chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, very finely chopped
• 1 fresh chilli, finely chopped
• 4 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1½ tsp ground allspice
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1½ tsp salt
• 4 pita bread
• 40 g butter, melted
• 2 garlic, crushed

Method

1. 1.

   Wring out the vegetables — Pile the chopped onion and green pepper into a clean cloth and wring them out hard over the sink. A wet filling steams the bread from the inside instead of crisping it, and this is the step that decides the texture.

2. 2.

   Mix the spiced filling — Mix the beef with the drained onion and pepper, the chilli, parsley, tomato paste, allspice, cumin, black pepper and salt. Work it with your hands for a minute until it is evenly coloured and holds together.

3. 3.

   Stuff and press the pitas — Heat the oven to 220°C. Slit each pita along one edge to open a pocket without tearing it, push in a quarter of the filling and press down from the outside until the meat spreads right to the rim in an even 1 cm layer.

4. 4.

   Brush with garlic butter — Stir the crushed garlic into the melted butter and brush it generously over both faces of each stuffed pita. Set them on a baking tray with a little space between them.

5. 5.

   Bake until crisp — Bake for about 24 minutes, turning them over halfway, until the bread is deep gold and rigid, blistered in patches, and the meat juices have soaked back into the crumb. Any juice pooling on the tray should have gone.

6. 6.

   Rest on a rack — Rest for 5 minutes on a wire rack rather than a plate, so the base stays crisp, then cut each one into wedges and serve hot.