Mssemen

Mssemen is a very popular Moroccan specialty, the ingredients that go into it are very few and very simple and the quality of the result will depend on the quality of flour and how skillful the Mssemen maker is :-)

Mssemen can be plain (first picture) and served with a little honey or stuffed with a savory filling (beef and onions as in the 2nd picture)

Ingredients:

For the dough:
Flour (high gluten preferred)
Water
pinch of salt

For the folding and cooking process:
Vegetable oil
Fine Semolina
Butter (room temperature)

The amounts are very flexible and depend on how much flour you wish to use, you will focus on the consistency of dough that you are wishing to have in order to know how much water you can add. We are looking for a soft and elastic dough.

Mix the flour salt and water and knead (in machine preferably) until you achieve a smooth and soft dough. Prepare a little bowl with oil, dip your fingers and distribute it on the palm of your hand (so the dough won't stick to them) and form little balls from your dough by squeezing it through your thumb and pointer as shown in the picture:

Pat all the balls with a little oil so they won't dry up and form a little crust

Start spreading each ball into a very thin circle and this will be the key to a flaky Mssemen, you want it to be almost see through

Spread a small layer of softened butter over the circle and sprinkle a generous pinch of semolina over it and start the folding process as shown in the pictures

ok, so now that the Mssemen has been folded over we are going to spread each square into a bigger square just by flattening it with the palm of our hand but this time we don't need it to be way too thin. This is what we're looking for ( I took the picture after I started cooking it)

We heat a skillet on medium fire and we spread small dots of butter on the surface that we're cooking first and then we add some butter on the opposite side. We want to cook the Mssemen until it's golden so we keep flipping on both sides; we don't want to wait until one side is cooked before we flip to the next. We are looking for the result below. Start with a small amount of ingredients until you get used to the process and then you'll be ready to graduate and make bigger amounts :-)  Enjoy!!