La Brick

A few ingredients, including sprouting potatoes

Place a dessertspoon of mix to the side

Fold brick over into triangles

Serve with chili jam and green salad

As we're on the theme of fried food, I made a dish which I have recently learned about.  My good friend Barbara was brought up in Tunisia, where 'brick' is as common as a sandwich. Delicious and exotic, it's somewhere inbetween a spring roll and a filo pastry triangle, oozing and unctuous.  It is a pastry which is spongy and flexible, typically stuffed with potato, egg, spices, herbs, harissa and fried in hot oil.

When I made brick with Barbara, we improvised and both struggled to remember what we had put in it.  Something along the lines of  potato, boiled egg, anchovy, tapenade, dill, red onion, cumin.  Nonetheless, it was something that 50 people polished off in minutes flat.

The brick pastry can be frozen and so this  could virtually be a storecupboard meal.  The whole thing made start to finish in 30 minutes.

Here's another version:

Serves 2

• 3 small potatoes peeled and boiled
  
• 2 spring onions sliced small
• 4 anchovy fillets sliced small
• 1 tsp capers
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 red chili chopped fine
• Parsley
• 4 sheets of brick pastry
• Sunflower oil

1. Boil and mash the potato with olive oil
2. Add the spring onion, anchovy, capers, chili and parsley
3. Season to taste add the lemon juice
4. Lay out the brick pastry and cut in half
5. Place a dessert spoon of potato mixture on one side and simply fold over forming a triangle, over and over until you have a neat parcel.
6. Fry in hot oil until golden
7. Drain on kitchen paper.
8. Serve with chili jam or yogurt, or as is.