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“Few dishes,” according to food writer Zeynep Betul, “embody the spirit of Turkish cuisine as perfectly as börek”. This family of crunchy, flaky pastries in various shapes and fillings are “immensely popular” throughout the country, says award-winning author Özlem Warren: “Even the fussiest child,” she assures readers of her book Özlem’s Turkish Table, “will … ask for seconds.”
So foundational do börek seem to be to Turkish life that a conservative female politician made headlines a few years ago for a tweet claiming that, if a woman didn’t know how to make them, “her family is doomed to disintegration”. In reality, as others were quick to point out, though börek aren’t difficult to prepare (and, with practice, perfect), many Turkish women, as well as men, choose to buy them instead, without obvious domestic repercussions. As journalist Belgin Akaltan puts it: “You can make börek for your own pleasure, for your own pastime. Just for fun. For your kids, for your husband, for your friends, for your guests, for your lesbian partner, but do not put it in the middle of your life as an objective, unless you are a professional cook.” They are indeed fun to make – but, I must concede, even more fun to eat.
The pastry
Arto der Haroutunian, the late Aleppo-born British Armenian artist and author of several books on the region’s cuisine, says in his A Turkish Cookbook that börek can be made with “filo, flaky and shortcrust, but some … have their own dough”. To this end, he provides a recipe for a kind of puff pastry made with ghee and a large block of butter laminated into it. It’s delicious, as is the puff pastry that Ayşenur Altan, the Istanbul-born and based creator behind the TurkishFoodTravel website, uses in her “two-ingredient easy Turkish börek”, but despite being rich and airy, both are quite different to the crunchy, crackly börek with which I’m more familiar.
English-language recipes for börek often call for filo, which is easily found in supermarkets. However, without wading too far into international waters, filo is a Greek pastry and, strictly speaking, börek is made with yufka, a similar product that tends to be rolled out slightly thicker than filo; indeed, Ghillie Basan describes it as an “unleavened Anatolian bread” in her book Classic Turkish Cookery. If you happen to have a Turkish food specialist nearby, you should be able to find yufka in the fridge there. It’s also available online, so I’d recommend trying to get hold of some if you can, not least because, mentioning no names, much of the filo that’s widely available in the UK has all the charm of baked cardboard.
That said, like filo, yufka has to be treated with care. Bring it to room temperature in its packaging before use, to reduce the risk of it cracking when unfolded. Then slather it with some sort of fat to render it supple enough to roll. Warren suggests a mixture of olive oil, milk and water, Basan sunflower oil, eggs and milk. Istanbul-born Kurdish chef and writer Melek Erdal uses melted butter, and Turkish-Australian chef Somer Sivrioglu milk, egg, yoghurt and sunflower oil in his book Anatolia, co-authored with David Dale. All work pretty well, though I like the flavour of yoghurt and olive oil with the egg best, because it seems to make things a little softer and richer.
If you’d like to experiment with homemade yufka, Altan has a useful tutorial. It is easier than it sounds, if you have the patience and a large enough work surface for rolling it out. I should add that many modern Turkish cooks seem to buy it for their homemade börek, but then, unlike us, they have it fresh on their doorsteps.
The filling
Börek can be filled with just about anything you fancy, be that meat, cheese, potatoes or vegetables. Der Haroutunian, for example, gives a recipe for a milk, yoghurt and cheese-filled version from the city of Adapazar, and Sivrioglu makes one with cured, spiced beef pastirma, tomatoes and green chillies. One of the most common combinations seems to be greens – often spinach – and white cheese: Warren explains that “Turkish white cheese, or beyaz peynir, is traditional … [but] living abroad, it’s hard to get, so I use a combination of feta cheese and grated mozzarella, which works well.”
If you have access to a shop that caters to this part of the world, or indeed the Balkans, you’ll be able to find white cheese, a huge and varied international category of which feta is just the best-known example (see also “Greek” AKA strained yoghurt – Greece is almost as good at marketing as cooking). Feel free to add grated mozzarella, too – or, even better, Erdal’s grated halloumi; der Haroutunian includes an intensely cheesy variation using grated hard cheese and dried oregano. He suggests cheddar, though I’d recommend a very mild variety or, better still, something that’s lower fat to ensure it melts rather than splits).
You could just leave it at that; Altan’s easy take is just white cheese and (optional!) parsley, but, much as I love cheese, I love it even more when it’s paired with greens, and specifically spinach. If using the greens raw, as Warren suggests, baby leaves are your best bet. But because I really like spinach, I favour the more robust mature sort –something that most supermarkets seem to have decided to cancel, but which can be found at greengrocers and markets. You can also use frozen, in which case, defrost and squeeze out thoroughly before use. The mature variety enables me to pack as much into the pastry as possible, keeping it crisp. Erdal swaps the spinach for courgette, grated and squeezed dry, but whatever you go for, I’d advise removing as much liquid as possible before introducing it to the pastry.
Sivrioglu’s recipe also involves onion, spring onion, chilli flakes, dried mint and a punchy amount of black pepper – spicy and undeniably tasty, but my testers and I prefer the fresher, if milder aromatics of Erdal’s spring onions and soft herbs (dill, parsley and mint). I also love her addition of chopped walnuts, which echo the crunch of the pastry and nicely complement the bitterness of the spinach.
Der Haroutunian and Warren include egg in their fillings, but, thanks to the eggy pastry basting liquid, I think I’ve got that base covered already. As she explains in Vittles, Erdal’s recipe is partly inspired by a baklava-making session with one Aunty Nuray, whose çarşaf baklava is apparently “famous on the street and would blow any other out of the park”. She pours over a “börek liquor”, rather than a syrup, of eggs, milk and olive oil, which is an excellent idea for any excess liquid, because it gives the börek a satisfyingly squidgy base.
The assembly
Börek comes in many forms, from Warren’s traybake tepsi börek, which can be cut into handy portable squares, to der Haroutunian’s samosa-like triangles and even deep-fried cigars. Which one you go for depends largely on how you’re planning to consume the end result – the last two are good for nibbles and snacks, the traybakes and spirals suggest a heartier meal – but I find I have two favourite shapes.
The first is the kol – which Sivrioglu explains means arm, “presumably … because each roll of pastry is bent to look like an arm coming round to hug you”. It looks impressive, and I like the way that the filling is distributed throughout, rather than sandwiched between two layers of pastry. I will warn you, however, that a neat coil is easier to achieve with puff pastry than with yufka or filo – which, if not absolutely fresh, has a tendency to crack in non-expert hands (I speak from experience). But, messy or not, the results still look good to me.
The second is Erdal’s concertina, in which the pastry is crinkled horizontally, rather than being stacked vertically, just like Aunty Nuray’s baklava, which means it has “a larger surface area exposed directly to heat, resulting in a crunchier and lighter börek”. I cannot tell you how delicious it is – much as I’d like to steal her brilliant idea, I urge you to try her recipe for yourself.
The finish
Brushing the börek with beaten egg, as Warren recommends, and scattering over some sesame or nigella seeds gives the pastry a lovely colour – though you might prefer to finish it with Erdal’s grated halloumi. Your börek, your choice.
Perfect spinach and cheese börek
Prep 30 min
Cook 30 min
Serves 4
4 spring onions
About 200g spinach, preferably mature leaves, or about 160g frozen spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
3 tbsp olive oil, plus a little extra for greasing
¼ tsp fine salt
¼ tsp pul biber
1 small bunch fresh mint, leaves picked
10g fresh dill
10g fresh flat-leaf parsley
30g shelled walnuts, roughly chopped (optional)
125g beyaz peynir, or other white cheese, such as feta, crumbled
1 egg
2 tbsp full-fat natural yoghurt
250g yufka or filo pastry, taken out of the fridge 15 minutes in advance
Nigella or sesame seeds, to finish (optional)
Trim and finely sliced the spring onions, both the white and the green parts. Wash and trim the spinach, then finely slice it stalks and all.
Put a tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat, then fry the onions, stirring, for about 10 minutes, until softened.
Add the spinach and salt, turn up the heat slightly and fry, stirring, until completely wilted and dried out (if using defrosted spinach, cook just until it’s well mixed in and dry).
Stir in the pul biber, then spread out the spinach mix on a large plate or tray.
Once cool, roughly chop the fresh herbs and stir them into the spinach with the nuts, if using, and crumbled cheese. (This can all be done well in advance, because, once made, the filling will keep well in the fridge for a few days.)
Whisk the egg, yoghurt and remaining olive oil in a small bowl.
Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6, and grease a round, 24cm-wide ovenproof pan (or any baking tray wider than that) with a little oil.
Carefully unfold the pastry and cut it into long rectangle-ish shapes (yufka is often sold in large circles, in which case if need be cut these in half to make half-moons, or, if it’s easier and you have only a small work surface, quarter-moons).
Filo may come in smaller rectangles, which can be used whole – just lay one on a clean work surface, and keep the rest covered until use.
Brush one pastry rectangle at a time with the egg and yoghurt mixture, then spoon a line of the filling down one of the long sides (or, if it’s a half moon, down the flat edge), leaving a small border around the edges.
Roll up into a long, moderately tight sausage (don’t worry if it cracks slightly), brush with more egg-and-yoghurt mix and coil into the centre of an ovenproof pan – again, if it cracks as you coil it, it’s not the end of the world. Repeat, adding each sausage to the end of the coil, until all the filling is used up.
Scatter with the seeds, if using, then bake for 25 minutes, or until golden. Leave to cool slightly, or completely, before slicing and serving.
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Börek: what’s your favourite version, and who makes the best? Is it an essential skill, whatever your gender, or do you prefer to leave them to the professionals? And what are your top tips for stopping the pastry cracking?
