Cauliflower pies with egg salad

Baking material:

• 40×35 cm baking tray,
• lined with non-stick baking paper

 

Dough (makes twelve pastries):

• 300 g plain flour
• 3 tbsp easy bake/easy blend dried yeast
• 1 egg
• 100 ml lukewarm water
• 3 tsp salt (6 g)

 

Filling:

• 250 g very small cauliflower florets
• 150 ml tahina (sesame paste)
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 100 ml water
• 4 tbsp chopped parsley
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• salt

 

To cover the dough:

• beaten egg white
• beaten egg yolk
• sesame seed

Cauliflower’s past is nebulous. It is firmly established that the vegetable stems directly from the prehistoric cabbage family. But the first recipes for cauliflower are written down not earlier than in medieval Arabic cookbooks (for example Al-Baghdadi, 1226) and the first description of the vegetable we find with two Arabic scientists from Moorish Spain: Ibn al-Awwam and Ibn al-Baitar, 12th and 13^th century. The name qarnabit is according to the authoritative Arabic-English dictionary of William Lane no loan word unlike the Dutch name bloemkool  which is just as English cauliflower a translation of Italian caviolfiore. Via that country the crop conquered Europe. And so it is possible that the Dutch owe their most popular vegetable to the Arabs.

Here you will find a Lebanese recipe: fatayer bil-qarnabit. Good in combination with a Lebanese egg salad salata bayd masluq. Which is made as follows: spread salad leaves, thin red onion rings and chopped red pepper onto a plate.  Sprinkle with a sauce of lemon juice, crushed garlic and salt. Slices of hard-boiled egg on top. Garnish with black olives and radishes.

• Mix flour with yeast. Add olive oil, egg and water. Knead for a moment to feel if some more water or some more flour is needed, then add salt. Then knead a supple dough (10 minutes in a machine). Leave to rise in a bowl covered with a moist cloth for an hour.
• Mix the tahina with juice and water to get a mayonnaise-like substance. Add parsley and garlic and salt to taste. Mix this sauce with the washed and dried cauliflower florets.
• Preheat the oven to 200˚C/400˚F/gas 6.
• On a floured surface press out the risen dough into a rectangle; cut into 12 pieces. Roll out into circles of 12 cm. Spread with egg white.
• Put a spoon of filling in the middle, leave an edge of 3 cm uncovered. Fold the dough from three sides upwards. Squeeze the rims with floured fingers. Leave a small hole on top.
• Put these ‘triangles’ onto the baking tray. Cover with cloth and leave to rise for 15 minutes. Then spread with yolk, sprinkle with sesame seed.
• Bake for 15-20 minutes on the middle shelf.