We cook for you – Mara’s rolls filled with ajvar and ham

A state of emergency caused by coronavirus, requires emergency measures. In my case, it means I had to start cooking every day. 🙂

I was forced to find a recipe that is not very difficult and where I can involve my three children to participate with me in the preparation process. One of them I got from my mother in law, and it is very simple and delicious.

Let’s start…

Ingredients:

• 900gr of flour
• 200 ml of oil
• 1 big spoon of sugar
• 1 big spoon of salt
• 500 ml of milk
• 1 bag of dry yeast – 10gr
• 2 eggs  
• 250 gr of ajvar – if you don’t have ajvar, you can put tomato puree
• 200 gr of ham (your favorite)

Instruction:

You should prepare as a bigger bowl as you have. For the dough, I use plastic ones.

Pour 500 ml of warm milk, not too warm, heated in around 50 degrees. After that we add 200ml of oil, 2 egg whites (do not throw yellow part of the egg, we will use that after), 1 spoon of sugar, one bag of yeast (10gr), 1 spoon of salt and around 200 gr of flour. Then we start to knead. At the beginning of kneading, I use a spoon or fork for mixing all the ingredients, and after it all became thicken, I am using hand. Partially,  I am adding the rest quantity of flour. That process lasts around 5 minutes until the dough becomes compact and not sticky. Then, we put out the dough from the bowl and pour some oil on the sides of the bowl and we also oil the dough. We put back dough into the bowl again, cover it with a kitchen towel and wait around 1,5 hours until the dough rest and rise.

After 1,5 hours add the dough to the working space. Below it put some flour so the dough won’t stick to the working surface. We split the dough into small pieces until we got small balls (around 5cm wide). After we have that size of balls, we use a rolling pin to make a square shape. If you don’t have a rolling pin, don’t worry, you can make square shape also with your hands. After we make wanted shapes, we add a little bit of ajvar (approximately 1 small spoon) and ham at the top of the dough, and down the part, we cut with the knife to get several lines. After you fill each roll, put into the casserole and turn the oven to 190C – 375 F . While the oven heats, use those two yolks to cover every roll. That will give them a very nice yellow color. Bake them in the heated oven for around 20 minutes.

This recipe is very simple. Trust me, if I managed to make them, everybody can! 🙂

Marija Šipka Pavlović is a Office Manager at Serbia Incoming DMC.