Mamoul

This is a classic Middle Eastern pastry of a light dough wrapped around a rich filling. I first learned about mamoul from my friend Dahlia Bilger, who kept pressing me to make some with her when she was a student at the New York Restaurant School in the early eighties. Alas, in the intervening years I lost the recipe Dahlia and I concocted. This one is loosely based on a recipe in Claudia Roden