Brik à l'oeuf

When we lived in Tunisia, I discovered a fantastic dish called brik à l'oeuf. It consists of a thin dough, called “malsouka” filled with meat (usually ground lamb or tuna) and an egg (“l'oeuf”). The whole thing is fried in oil until the brik is crisp and the egg is cooked just to sunny-side-up consistency. It takes practice to eat a brik à l'oeuf with dignity because as soon as you bite into it, the egg runs everywhere.

There are a variety of fillings for brik à l'oeuf but I'm partial to ground lamb seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley. Brik à l'oeuf is rather involved to make, they don't make good leftovers, and since you can really only fry up one or two at a time (unless you have a serious production line going in your kitchen) you can't have a group of people sitting down at the same time to eat brik à l'oeuf. Nevertheless, they are so tasty that it is worth the effort every once in awhile.

This is an authentic Tunisian recipe that came from a little recipe booklet my mother got in Tunis.

Brik à l'oeuf (6 servings)

• ½ lb. ground lamb
• 1 onion
• 2 tbsp. finely minced parsley
• 7 sheet of malsouka (eggroll or phyllo dough can be used)
• 1 tbsp. (or ½ oz.) butter
• 6 eggs
• salt & pepper to taste
• olive oil for frying
• 2 lemons

1. Sauté the onion and the lamb and season with salt and pepper.
2. When all of the water has evaporated from the pan, add the parsley and butter and simmer over low heat.
3. Take a sheet of pastry (fold in the sides to from a square if necessary) and reinforce the middle with a piece taken from the extra (7th) sheet.
4. Put 2 rounded tbsp. of filling and a whole raw egg in the middle, fold one corner over on top of the other corner to form a triangle and then slide the brik into a frying pan with enough hot oil to deep-fat fry.
5. Spoon the hot oil over the top of the brik to make it swell.
6. Serve with quartered lemons to be squeezed over the brik as they are eaten.