Amina and I made briouats this evening for a Moroccan meal that her mother made in honor of my father-in-law's birthday next week ... these cookies are incredibly labor-intensive, but worth the payoff.
If you've never had one before -- and I hadn't until Amina and I were on vacation in Paris a few years ago -- the briouat is a close cousin to baklava ... kind of like a baklava cookie, but not as sweet. They're filled with ground almonds, sugar and butter, and wrapped in phyllo dough, which is the hardest f*cking thing I've ever worked with in a kitchen. Seriously, I limited myself to (1) frying the briouats in oil while (2) marinating others in honey and (3) watching sesame seeds toast on the stovetop. Doing all that at the same time was easier than wrapping those cookies up. Amina deserves as medal for doing it.
We also made ghouribi, which are amazing little almond cookie balls that taste fantastic with coffee. It's an odd recipe for me, in that you replace eggs with vegetable oil. The oil binds the dough, but not as strongly as an egg would. The resulting cookies crumble more than you'd expect, but the oil lends a very different taste-- more dense and rich. It's good stuff and compared to the briouats they're like falling off a log.
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