Monaco 2024

For a country of super-rich people, we might expect their typical snacks to be gold bars, but Heidi set about this week's research and found what apparently is a national dish. 

Barbagiuan are one for our vegetarian friends. Mini pasties filled with ricotta and leeks.

Immediately this ruled out any possibility that Siân or Tally would even try them, so Heidi set about making these and I joined for the eating bit.

The pastry is made with olive oil and water, instead of butter, which makes it less rich, but smooth. Once again, we deep-fry.

These are ok, but not one we'll be writing home about (only writing the blog).

Kneading the pastry dough

Extensive fine chopping

Softening the leeks and onion

Mix with egg, ricotta and parmesan

Rolling the dough proved difficult. But use of the pasta roller was a genius moment.

Cut, fill, fold and crimp, before deep-frying 

Eat with caution, because the inside is hotter than the sun.

We made just enough that we could try these as a late evening snack and the quantities in the recipe are a bit unequal which meant we had loads of filling left over. In a failed attempt to shallow fry delicate quenelles of the filling alone, we discovered why the pastry casing is needed.

Photo taken before the collapse (no photo was possible after this piping hot goop entered my mouth)

Recipe

Pastry ingredients (maybe we used half of this)

200 g Plain Flour

1/2 tsp Salt

60 ml Olive Oil

1 Egg 

3 tablespoon Water

Filling ingredients (of which we probably used only 1/4)

1/2 Onion, finely chopped

1/2 Leek, finely chopped

2 leaves pointed cabbage (I guess this gives a sharper flavour)

Some Spinach 

1/2 tsp dried Oregano

2 1/2 tbsp Ricotta Cheese

1 tbsp Parmesan 

1 Egg

1 ltr Vegetable Oil for deep frying

Method 

1. Mix the pastry ingredients in a bowl and bring it together. Knead for 10 mins until smooth. Place it in a zippy bag (does anyone know the technical term for these?) and chill in the fridge for 30 mins. 
2. While it's cooling, chop and cook down the onion and leek. Don't let it brown. Add cabbage, spinach and oregano, aiming to make it soft and squidgy. Let this cool in a bowl, to avoid scrambling the egg later.
3. Add to the onion/leek bowl the ricotta, parmesan and egg. Mix to a lumpy paste of green and cream colours that doesn't look entirely appetizing.
4. Roll the dough through a pastry maker to quite thin. Cut 6cm circles.
5. Place 1 teaspoon of filling in each circle. Fold in half, seal with egg white and crimp with the prongs of a fork (Heidi doing this most satisfying).
6. Deep fry to crispy outside.
7. Leave these forever to cool down (read this, spoken through a burnt tongue)