The Uzbek samsa that got me hooked came from a tiny six-seat place off Chorsu Bazaar in Tashkent, wedged between a fabric stall and a man selling lemons out of a wheelbarrow. No sign. No menu. The owner, a wiry man named Bahodir, pointed at the tandyr and held up two fingers. I held up two back.
He set them down on a chipped saucer with a small dish of vinegar and sliced raw onion. I bit the corner. Hot lamb juice ran out before the crust did. I sat there for an hour.
Before I left Tashkent I asked if I could come back early one morning and watch the baker work. Bahodir nodded like it was the most normal request in the world. Be here at five, he said.
Five in the Morning Behind the Chaikhana
The baker was not Bahodir. It was his cousin Ulugbek, who did not speak any English and did not seem to mind that I did not speak any Uzbek. He had a long, thin rolling pin and a wooden table that took up most of the back room. The dough was already resting when I got there, covered with an inverted enamel bowl.
He rolled it out so thin I could see the grain of the table through it. Then he smeared softened lamb tail fat across the whole sheet with the heel of his palm. Rolled it into a long, snug log. Cut. Chilled. Then the spiral side up, always up, never flipping the dough. I scribbled in a notebook the whole time and he laughed at me once, quietly.
The filling was hand-chopped lamb, nearly equal weight of onion, cumin, black pepper, salt, and a splash of cold water mixed in at the end until the meat went glossy. That was it. He pressed each shaped triangle bottom-flat against his palm so it would sit flush on the inner wall of the tandyr.
What the Research Actually Says
Back in my apartment in Los Angeles I went looking for the history, because the dish felt older than Bahodir’s grandfather and I wanted to know how much older. Turns out a lot. The pastry traces back to the Persian sanbosag, written down in Arab and Persian cookbooks around the 10th and 13th centuries, even praised in verse by the 9th-century poet Ishaq al-Mawsili.
It traveled the Silk Road and put down roots in Samarkand and the Fergana Valley, where Turkic cooks adapted it to the tandyr and to lamb tail fat. Uzbeks now call it the queen of their cuisine, which I would not argue with.
One thing worth saying out loud. Uzbek samsa is not Indian samosa. Samosas are deep-fried, usually vegetarian, potato and pea. Samsa is baked, always baked, and built around lamb. Fry it and you have made something else entirely.
Recreating Tashkent in a 500-Degree Oven
The first time I tried these at home I made every wrong call. I used a meat grinder for the lamb because it was faster. The filling came out dense and pasty, like a meatloaf in a wrapper. I tried again with a heavy knife and pea-sized hand-chopped pieces, the way Ulugbek did it, and the texture finally made sense. The fat melts in pockets and the lean stays toothy.
The fat itself was the next problem. Lamb tail fat is not exactly a Whole Foods item. I get mine from the Armenian butcher on Hollywood Boulevard, who looks at me sideways every time I ask for dumba and then disappears into the back. If I cannot get there in time I use cold ghee from the Indian grocery near my apartment. Butter burns at 500 and ruins the whole thing. Do not.
The tandyr is the part I cannot recreate. A clay oven roaring at 800 degrees with the samsa stuck to the inner wall is not happening in a Silver Lake rental kitchen. The closest substitute is a pizza steel preheated for a full half hour at 500. The bottoms char properly. The tops blister. The smell, when the egg wash hits the heat and the nigella seeds start to toast, almost gets me back to that back room.
What I Used
- 3.5 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 1 cup warm water, around 100 F
- 1.5 tsp fine salt for the dough, plus 2 tsp for the filling
- 6 tbsp lamb tail fat, finely chopped, or softened ghee as substitute
- 1.25 lb fatty lamb shoulder, hand-chopped into pea-sized pieces
- 1.25 lb yellow onions, very finely diced, about 4 medium
- 2 tsp ground cumin, freshly ground if you can
- 1.5 tsp ground black pepper
- 3 tbsp cold water for the filling
- 1 large egg, beaten, for the wash
- 1 tbsp nigella seeds, or sesame if you cannot find them
The Folds and the Heat
The lamination is the part most home cooks rush. I did, the first time. You roll the rested dough into a sheet so thin it looks fragile, smear the fat to the edges, then roll it into a log like a poster. Chill it. Cut it into rounds, stand each round on its cut end, and press down so the spiral is facing you. Roll outward from the center only. Never flip.
Filling goes in cold straight from the fridge. Lift three sides, pinch firmly at the top, press each seam shut, flatten the bottom against the counter. Egg wash. Nigella. Onto a piece of parchment and straight onto the screaming-hot steel.
I bake mine at 500 for twelve minutes, then drop to 425 for another ten or thirteen. The bottoms should be properly browned. The tops should be deeply golden and a little blistered. Rest them three minutes on a rack or the filling will burn your tongue. It is volcanic in there.
How I Eat Them Now
I keep a bowl of white vinegar with thinly sliced raw onion on the counter for dipping, the way Bahodir did. Always with green tea. I have tried black tea, oolong, even iced tea once on a hot afternoon. Green is right. I do not fully know why.
Cold leftovers, eaten standing up at the kitchen counter. Better than I expected. Almost better than fresh.
I think about that back room a lot. The wooden table, the smell of cumin and onion at five in the morning, Ulugbek wordlessly handing me a cup of tea while the first batch baked. I am not in Tashkent. But for the half hour these are in the oven, the apartment smells like I am.
Uzbek Samsa
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Make the dough. In a large bowl, stir 1.5 tsp salt into 1 cup warm water until dissolved. Add the flour and mix with your hand until a shaggy mass forms, then turn out onto a lightly floured counter and knead firmly for 10 minutes, until smooth, tight, and only slightly tacky.
- Shape the dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap or an inverted bowl, and rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Do not skip the rest — it relaxes the gluten so the dough can be rolled paper-thin.
- Soften the lamination fat. If using lamb tail fat, chop it very finely and warm it in a small skillet over low heat just until it turns spreadable and slightly translucent, about 3 minutes. Do not melt it to liquid. If using ghee, simply soften it to the texture of room-temperature butter.
- Make the filling. On a large board, hand-chop the lamb shoulder with a heavy knife into pea-sized pieces, keeping the fat mixed evenly through the lean. Scrape into a bowl with the very finely diced onions, 2 tsp salt, the cumin, and the black pepper. Add 3 tbsp cold water and mix vigorously with your hand for a full minute, until the mixture looks glossy and slightly sticky. Refrigerate while you laminate the dough.
- Laminate the dough. On a floured counter, roll the rested dough into a very thin rectangle about 20 by 24 inches — thin enough that you can almost see the counter through it. Spread the softened lamb fat or ghee in an even, thin layer all the way to the edges using your fingers or a pastry brush.
- Starting from a long edge, roll the dough up tightly into a long, snug log, like rolling a poster. Gently stretch the log as you go to keep the layers tight. Cut the log in half, wrap both pieces in plastic, and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes so the fat firms up.
- Place a pizza stone or baking steel on the middle rack and preheat the oven to 500 F for at least 30 minutes. The stone must be ripping hot to mimic the tandyr.
- Cut each chilled log crosswise into 6 equal pieces, for 12 pieces total. Stand each piece on its cut end so you can see the spiral of laminated layers, and press down gently with your palm to flatten into a thick disk.
- Roll each disk into a 5-inch round, working from the center outward and keeping the spiral side facing up and down — never flip the dough or you will crush the layers. The edges should be slightly thinner than the center.
- Fill and shape. Place a heaping 2 tablespoons of filling in the center of each round. Lift three sides of the dough up and pinch them together firmly at the top to form a sealed triangle, then pinch each seam closed all the way down. Press lightly on the counter to flatten the bottom so the samsa will sit flush on the hot stone.
- Brush the tops generously with beaten egg and sprinkle each samsa with a good pinch of nigella seeds. Arrange them sealed-side down and bottom flat on a piece of parchment.
- Bake. Slide the parchment with the samsa directly onto the screaming-hot stone. Bake at 500 F for 12 minutes, then reduce the heat to 425 F and bake for another 10 to 13 minutes, until the tops are deeply golden, blistered, and the bottoms are crisp and browned.
- Rest the samsa for 3 minutes on a rack before serving — the filling is volcanic inside. Eat hot, holding one in a napkin and biting the corner to sip the rendered lamb juices first, the way they do in Tashkent.