Ramadan Kareem!
Yesterday marked the first day of the holy month of Ramadan – where billions of people around the world refrain from food and drink from sunrise until sunset for 29-30 days based on the lunar calendar. It is a time to reflect on your life, reconnect with god and be thankful for everything you have, most notably a kitchen full of food (which those less fortunate do not have the luxury of having).
As Ramadan creeps into the hot summer months, it’s a conflicted feeling simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the fast. The long, hot days make me miss the years Ramadan fell in the winter, closer to Christmas and Thanksgiving when we could break our fast at 4:30pm as opposed to 8:40pm in the summer months.
But it isn’t the long days that do me in; it’s my need for coffee in the morning to get me going.
Ramadan is an exciting month for so many reasons – really all the Iftars to look forward to. With limited weekends, invitations for Itfar go out at least a month in advance. I’m booked pretty much every weekend, and the month just began! It’s a time when friends and family gather, we talk about our long work hours, how we managed to sneak in a quick nap at work – the stories I’ve heard are hilarious, how we’re planning to actually lose weight this year and the silly stories of trying to explain why we fast to those who don’t practice.
Living in the U.S. has proved a little more difficult than those living in the Middle East. We have more explaining to do “Correct, we can’t drink water either,” we go out of our way to make sure the kids feel like it’s their holiday and we can’t escape the smell of food.
When we were kids, barely making it through half-day fasts, my cousins and I used to gather at my Aunt’s house for Iftar almost every weekend. She decorated her home with lights and set up special Arabic-style seating. She really made us feel like Ramadan was a special time… that it was our holiday and we celebrated it. Along with dates and water, lentil soup and samboosas were a staple. If it wasn’t for our mothers making us eat main dishes, we could have easily filled up on these savory meat-filled pastries. Not an iftar went by without them.
Ingredients
- 1 package Wonton Wrappers
- 1 Egg White
- 2 tablespoons Water
- Vegetable oil for frying
- 1 lb Ground Beef
- Salt, to taste
- 1 tablespoon Seven Spice
- 1 small Onion, chopped
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 cup Crumbled Feta Cheese
- 2 tablespoons Zaatar
Instructions
- Start by preparing the stuffing. You can make two types of stuffing; meat or cheese
- For the meat stuffing, heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a frying pan
- Sautee the chopped onion until translucent
- Add the ground beef and brown with the onion, add salt and seven spice
- Drain the meat and then put it in a food processor and pulse until it is chopped up very fine, set aside
- For the cheese stuffing, mix together the feta and zaatar in a bowl, crumble until fine with a fork, or put in the food processor
- Now you can begin putting the samboosa together
- In a small bowl, mix together the egg white and water and keep close by
- Using a small spoon, hold the wonton wrapper in one hand and spoon the stuffing across the middle
- Pull together the corners so that you create a triangle shape
- Brush the inside of the triangle with the egg white mixture and press together until the edges stick and place on a baking tray
- Repeat with the rest of the wonton wrappers and stuffing
- Once you’ve stuffed and assembled all your samboosas, heat the vegetable oil in a large frying pan
- Make sure the oil is very hot before you begin frying
- Add as many samboosas as you can into the oil and brown on each side. If the oil is very hot, it’ll only take a couple minutes per side
- Remove the samboosas from the oil with tongs onto paper towels
- Repeat with all the samboosas
- Serve warm
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