Börek Making Lesson

This is börek, a wonderful savory pastry often eaten for breakfast. It comes either rolled, as in the photo above, or layered. I often get börek for breakfast in a pastry shop around the corner. The choice of fillings there are cheese with herbs, ground beef, chicken, potato with red pepper and spinach. The husband of one of my colleagues in international relations offered to teach me how to make his family's recipe. They use cheese and zucchini as a filling. It's fabulous.

You start with yufka, which is essentially a very thin white flour tortilla. Of course it's about a yard in diameter. You buy it in sheets at the open market.

Before starting to make the filling, you unfold the layers of dough and spread them out. If you leave them folded, the moisture will make them stick together and they will tear when you try to handle them. You cover them with paper while they rest.


For the filling you grate peeled zucchini and salt it liberally. The salt will draw out water. You squeeze the water out of the grated zucchini by the handful and place it into a bowl.

To the drained zucchini you add lots and lots of chopped dill and some chopped parsley. The dill is for flavor, the parsley more for color.

Next you crumble on dry white cheese like feta and mix it into the zucchini.

To the zucchini-cheese mixture add eggs, black pepper and dried mint and mix. You then pile the mixture to one side of the bowl so more water can drain out.


Returning to the dough, you slice it in half. What you see here are 9 layers of pastry. It will make a double batch of börek.

You then place one half of the pastry on top of the other, giving you 18 layers.

Now you make the "glue" that will hold the rolled pastry together. You mix olive oil and yogurt together 1-1, that is one cup yogurt to one cup olive oil. To that you add 3 eggs and mix.

Next you spoon some of the "glue" around the edges of the semi-circle of dough and spread with a wide pastry brush. That is chef Altug (silent "g").

Next you fold the rounded edge about one third of the way to the top.

You then spread the zucchini mixture across the folded part of the pastry.

Next you fold the outer edges toward the center, forming a rectangular piece of pastry.

You then roll the pastry from bottom to top.

There you have it -- one roll, and seventeen more to go.

The rolls are placed in a heavily oiled pan.

You brush the tops liberally with the yogurt-oil mixture and bake for nearly 30 minutes in a hot oven.

Are they done yet?!

Ah, yes. And I get hungry just looking at this fabulous pan of börek.

Actually, you should let the börek sit for about 15 minutes before cutting, covered with newspaper or a cloth to keep it from drying out.

And here is the beautiful table set by my colleague Bezen. The börek is in the upper left corner. There was also a wonderful bulgur salad that you eat wrapped in a leaf of romaine lettuce and crepes for dessert. There is no sour cream here so we had to use yogurt instead. We also had strawberry preserves, pumpkin preserves, and nutella as toppings. It was quite a feast. Hope I can do this at home. You're invited, of course!