Photo: Andrea Calabretta · CC BY 2.0
Brik (Fried Pastry with a Whole Egg Inside)
Tunisian street food: mashed potato, tuna and one whole raw egg folded into a sheet of malsouka, a pastry as thin as paper, and deep-fried. Every other fried parcel on this site answers the steam pressure from its filling with a thicker wrapper. Brik goes the other way — the filling is built to have almost no free water in it, and the wrapper is the thinnest on the site. Ninety seconds, and it comes out with the white set and the yolk still running.
Ingredients
- The filling
- potatoes · floury; boiled, mashed and cooled completely400 g
- tinned tuna · squeezed dry and the oil discarded160 g
- onion · finely chopped, salted and squeezed1
- parsley · finely chopped1 handful
- capers · optional1 tbsp
- harissa1 tsp
- salt0.5 tsp
- black pepper0.5 tsp
- To wrap
- malsouka (brik pastry) · spring roll wrappers are the nearest substitute; with filo, use two sheets together6 sheets
- eggs · one per sheet, very fresh6
- To fry
- neutral oil1 L
- To serve
- lemon1
- harissa2 tbsp
Steps
- ⏲ 40 min
Boil and mash the potatoes and cool them completely. Warm potato gives off steam, and this wrapper has no margin for it.
- ⏲ 15 min
Salt the chopped onion, leave it fifteen minutes and squeeze it hard by hand. Squeeze the tuna dry too. Taking the water out of the filling is what lets the wrapper be this thin (wrapping and sealing).
- ⏲ 10 min
Mix the cooled potato with the tuna, onion, parsley, capers, harissa, salt and pepper. It should be stiff and not stick to your hand; add more potato if it is loose.
- ⏲ 10 min
Heat the oil to 180C. Hotter than most frying here, and for far less time.
- ⏲ 5 min
Lay a sheet of malsouka out and spread the filling in a ring over the lower half, leaving a hollow in the middle. Crack an egg into that hollow. Do not break the yolk.
- ⏲ 3 min
Fold it over into a triangle and press the edges together with your fingers. Do not seal it tight — a little steam has to get out, and it is over in ninety seconds anyway.
- ⏲ 1 min
Slide it into the oil immediately. Left standing, the egg wets the pastry and it tears. Spoon hot oil over the top to cook the upper surface.
- ⏲ 1 min 30 sec
Forty-five seconds a side. Out when the pastry is deep gold — at that point the white is set and the yolk is still liquid. Longer and the yolk sets.
- ⏲ 2 min
Drain on a rack and serve hot, with lemon and harissa. Bite a corner off and eat it in the hand.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Brik à l'oeuf: the plain version with nothing but the egg. The potato and tuna came later, and in Tunisia brik usually means the one with an egg in it.
- Other fillings: prawn, minced meat, or brousse — a fresh curd cheese — with parsley. It is close to compulsory on an iftar table in Ramadan.
- Instead of malsouka: spring roll wrappers are the nearest thing; filo is thinner still, so use two sheets. Dumpling wrappers are too thick and give a different food.
- The fold: a triangle is commonest, but it is also rolled into a cigar or folded in half round.
- Algerian bourek: the neighbouring version, usually minced meat and usually without the egg.
Tips
- Wrapping and sealing's ordering rule is inverted here. That guide says the cooking method sets the wrapper thickness and puts it plainly: "Boiled or fried — thickest. Convection in boiling water and thermal shock in oil hit the seam directly. The heavy wrappers on pierogi and samosa are not a stylistic choice." Brik is fried and uses the thinnest wrapper on this site. The same guide's opening line is why it gets away with it — "a dumpling bursts because of water in the filling" — so with the water gone there is no pressure and no need for thickness. It is the exception you earn by obeying the rule first.
- Samosa is the exact counterpart. That one fries nearly twenty minutes in barely-warm oil so a stiff, fat-rich pastry shatters instead of bending. This is ninety seconds at 180C. Two fried triangular snacks with every condition reversed.
- It also inverts chicken Kiev, which builds a double-crumbed pressure vessel to contain melted butter. Brik removes the pressure instead. Same problem, opposite answer.
- The egg is the only water in the parcel. That is why the potato is cooled, the onion and tuna are squeezed, and the filling has to be stiff. Break any one of those three and the pastry tears in the oil.
- Fold and fry, with nothing in between. A few minutes standing and the egg soaks into the pastry underneath it. Have the filling ready and make them one at a time.
- Spoon oil over the top. It is too thin to turn casually, so cook the upper surface by basting and turn it only once.
- Hot, and in the hand. A fork lets the yolk out onto the plate. Biting a corner and catching what runs is the dish.
The basics behind this dish
- Deep Frying: Temperature, Batter, and the Second FryFrying is not cooking in oil so much as trading the food's water for it. Two temperatures, what each kind of coating is for, and why the second fry exists.
- Wrapping and Sealing: Why Dumplings BurstA dumpling bursts because of water in the filling, almost every time. How to deal with the filling first, when to seal with water and when with egg, why the pleats are structural, and how the cooking method decides the thickness of the wrapper.
- Heat Control: Preheating, Oil, and Reading the PanThe same ingredients become a different dish depending on pan temperature. When to add the oil, how to read heat by sound, and which dishes want low heat instead.
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