Making M'simmon...mmmmmm!

My obliging maid, Khadija helped me put on a demonstration for some of our new teachers - "How to make m'simmon" There is some debate about how to actually spell (let alone pronouce) the name of this yummy food - but we all agree that it takes a long time to make. (Which is why I let Khadija do most of the work, or sometimes all of the work.)

First the dough is made - which consists of water, white flour and something that I beleive is semolina (a course type of flour that looks a lot like cornmeal - but comes from wheat). The dough is kneaded wet (so instead of adding flour to knead you ad water) in a ripping motion -it looks like you are stretching the dough against the counter until it rips, then rolling it back into the rest like making a play-dough snake.

Then, the dough is made into little balls and placed on an oiled tray. This is a really fun part. You grease your hands with oil and grab a handful of dough and turn it under until it is smooth on top, then sqirt it out between your thumb and fingers (where you would draw a funny talking face on your hand) until it looks like the top of a fat button mushroom.

After these balls have rested for a bit the next step is to stretch them, pat them, rub them, with oil into the shape of a very thin square of dough. Then the filling (these can also be made without filling and often are - but this way is a specialty) is placed in the middle and the edges are folded in to make a smaller square. That fat square is flipped over into the middle of another thinly stretched square of dough which is folded over, encasing the filling in several layers.

After the pans are hot and all the dough has been made into the stuffed squares. One by one the squares are carefully pressed flat and placed in the hot pans to fry.


We took turns helping - I got to knead dough (khadija got to re-knead it so it was right), the girls got to help stuff and fold, and all the new staff/spectators who came got to eat some (and a few who were not so new got to have some too!)!