"Forget Me Not" Sambusik Cookies

I am a little late for this post actually. Last months BookClub choice was "The Language of Baklava" by Diana AbuJaber. An engaging story that tells you about a migrant Jordanian father and an American mother and the family they have raised by fusing or trying to fuse both the cultures. The kids grow up in America and partially in Jordan but the tastebuds are trained in a Jordan kitchen .The father is trying to hold on to his country by cooking its or his food more and more and the kids foodwise get the best of both worlds. A similar story with lots of recipes mostly Jordanian/Middle Eastern.

The author spent memorable part of her childhood in Jordan as well and talks about how she started mingling eith the local children there and formed a play group and also about how her friendship was nearly destroyed by the arrival of an English boy and the lure of a red scooter.She tells about a neighbour who even asked her about why she never mingles with the local kids and that the same neighbour had given her the tempting sambusik cookies just as a symbol of friendship.

Sambusik or sambusak is a cousin of samosa and is a deep fried snack. The above mentioned cookies are stuffed with a filling and are shaped like sambusak. I suppose this gave it the name sambusik cookies.Well here I have recreated Diana's sambusik cookies with a minimum quantity of ingredients.The original recipe was for 3 dozen cookies,but I tried it for barely 6 coookies.

Mix the filling ingredients and keep aside. I coarsely powdered handful of walnuts along with sugar in a blender and then added a dash of rose water and mixed it well.

Roll out the dough to atleast 1/4' thickness or as thin as you want. Cut out circles from the dough using  1' cookie cutter. The original mentioned 2' circles, but since I  used the smallest quantity of ingredients,I went for 1' inch circles.

Fill each circle with about 1/4 tsp of filling. Fold over the circle and pinch the sides together.

Bend each cookie to get a crescent shape or sambusik shape.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350F for about 10 or until the sides/bottoms  are slightly browned. Mine took barely 8 minutes. The baking collage looks like...

 Lets see what others have made for Diana Abu Jaber.Do check out BookClub.