Quipes

Ingredients

• 300 g fine bulgur wheat
• 500 ml cold water, to soak
• 400 g beef mince
• 2 onions, 1 grated and 1 finely chopped
• ½ green pepper, finely chopped
• 2 tsp dried mint
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp allspice
• juice of 1 lime
• 2 tsp salt
• ½ tsp black pepper
• 800 ml vegetable oil, for frying

Method

1. Soak the bulgur, do not boil it

   Cover the fine bulgur with cold water and leave it forty minutes, then squeeze it dry in your hands. Boiled bulgur will not bind into a shell — it has to swell slowly and stay firm.

   40 min

2. Work the shell

   Knead the drained bulgur with the grated onion, salt and pepper for a good five minutes until it holds together like a stiff dough. This kneading is the whole difference between quipes that hold and quipes that burst.

   5 min

3. Cook the filling dry

   Fry the chopped onion, pepper and mince with the mint, cinnamon and allspice until browned and quite dry, then sharpen with lime and cool completely. A wet filling steams inside the shell and splits it.

   10 min

4. Shape torpedoes

   Take a golf ball of shell, hollow it with a wet thumb, fill it and seal it into a pointed torpedo. Keep a bowl of cold water beside you — wet hands are the only way the bulgur behaves.

5. Chill before frying

   Rest the shaped quipes in the fridge for half an hour. Cold ones hold their shape in the oil; warm ones relax and leak.

   30 min

6. Fry at 175°C

   Fry a few at a time for four or five minutes until deep brown. They freeze raw very well, which is what every Dominican family actually does with them.

   5 min