Sambousek, the Syrian half-moon pastry

Sambousek is a sealed pastry made from thin dough. The dough is cut into discs, the filling goes in the middle, the disc is folded over into a half-moon and the edge is crimped shut with fingers or a fork. It is fried, and that is the point. A baked version exists, but the fried one is what a Syrian table expects, and in Ramadan it is the first plate to arrive beside the soup.

What goes inside

There are two classic fillings. The first is minced lamb or beef cooked down with onion, with pine nuts, cinnamon and black pepper. The second is white cheese with parsley, the lighter one. Crimping the edge is work rather than decoration: the dough is pressed hard so the seam does not open in the oil. One pastry that opens empties its filling into the pan and spoils the whole batch.

How it differs from fatayer

It parts from the fatayer on this site in three ways at once. Fatayer is filled with spinach, sealed on three sides into a triangle and baked. Sambousek is a half-moon, filled with meat or cheese, and fried. They can sit side by side on one table, but one is the bakery’s work and the other the stove’s.

Its place at the Ramadan table

Sambousek is the fixed opening of iftar in Syria. It comes out with the soup, and it is often the first mouthful after the fast. The preparation is built around that: trays of them are folded raw before Ramadan and frozen, and each evening only that night’s share is taken out and fried. A household eats from the same batch all month.

Where the name comes from

The name goes back to the Middle Persian word sanbosag, meaning a triangular pastry. The same family of sealed pastries is called samosa to the east and empanada to the west. Sambousek is the Levantine end of it, and the filling is where it separates from its relatives: minced meat, onion and pine nuts is the local taste.