Elawin
Guru
Serves: 2
Preparation time: 40-45 minutes
Cooking time: 20-25 minutes
Oven temperature: Gas mark 7/220 C/200 fan/425 F (may need adjusting slightly, depending on your oven)
Ingredients:
For the dough:
100 g white bread flour
10 ml vegetable oil, plus a little extra for brushing
Pinch of salt
60 ml water
You will also need a baking sheet and some baking parchment preferably slightly larger than the baking sheet.
For the filling:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp black onion seeds
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
1-2 chillies, red or green, finely sliced, to taste
1 cm piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped or grated
2-3 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
100 g chestnut mushrooms, chopped into pea-sized pieces
Salt, to taste
Black pepper, freshly ground, to taste
50 g walnuts or pecan nuts, finely chopped or coarsely ground
Method:
- Mix the ingredients together to form a dough, knead lightly and leave to stand for about half an hour.
- Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Then add the mustard, onion and cumin seeds. Cook for about a minute, then reduce the heat slightly and add the onion. Fry lightly, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes until it is translucent and just starting to brown. Add the chillies, ginger and garlic, and cook for a further 5 minutes. Then add the mushroom pieces. Stir to mix, add the salt and black pepper, and then cook for about 15 minutes, adding a tablespoon or so of water after 10 minutes if the mixture appears dry. At the end of the cooking time, the water should all have evaporated. Then stir in the nuts, take off the heat, and allow to cool.
- While the filling is cooling, form the dough into a ball, and brush lightly with the extra oil.
- Place the baking parchment on the baking sheet and lightly oil it.
- With your hands, flatten the ball of dough as much as you can on to the baking parchment, then stretch it thinly into a large oblong as near to the size of your baking sheet as possible. Ideally it should be paper thin with no holes.
- Brush a little oil on to two thirds of the stretched dough, and spread the cooled filling on to the remainder of the dough.
- Using the parchment, roll the strudel up filling side first and place on to the lightly oiled baking sheet, with the seam underneath. Brush the top of the strudel and seal the ends with a little oil.
- Bake in the centre of the oven for approx. 20 minutes until the pastry is starting to brown and is set. Cut the strudel in half and serve.
Notes:
- This dish can be rather hot depending which type of chillies you use. I used 2 birds-eye chillies in mine which I found about right.
- I served mine with wilted down spinach, and some yoghurt to counteract the spiciness slightly.
- Double the amounts given above to serve 4 people, triple the amounts for 6, and so on, but you will need to adjust the amount of oil for cooking the filling to 1 1/2 and 2 tablespoons of oil respectively, and divide the dough into halves or thirds. Do not try to make one large strudel!
I made it as a bit of an experiment - I've got loads of recipes for sweet strudels, but only had one for a savoury strudel, which had cabbage as the main ingredient in the filling, and I fancied something spicy! If it hadn't have worked, it wouldn't have been on here and I would have ended up with egg and chips for dinner 
