Borek

This weekend I decided to try making borek, a mainstay food of Turkey. This is like their peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich! Kids take it to school in lunch pails, it's served with tea to neighbors, it's on menus of most restaurants. I've just never made it because we get it so often elsewhere.

To begin, you buy a package of yufka. This consists of 6 enormous circles of extremely thin dough. It's like phyllo dough and is paper thin. It almost always begins to tear when I handle it. You put one piece of yufka down as the base, letting it hang off your pan. After making a mixture of 1 1/4 cups of milk and 3/4 cup of oil, you spread that mixture (generously) on your first layer with a pastry brush. Then you add a second circle of dough, but this time, scrunching the dough up so it fits inside. (Is scrunching a cooking term?) Spread oil/milk on this as well. Then add the third layer, again letting it ripple to fit. This time, you don't add the oil/milk, you add your filling.

Your filling can be just about anything. Feta Cheese with parsely, spinach and cheese, etc. Ooooo, bacon and cheddar for you US folks. I chose cooked potatoes with some sauteed onion and a little hot red pepper.

(I also decided to make mine 1/2 and 1/2. On the left side, I used some of my floating goat cheese. ) (smile)

After you put on your filling, add a 4th layer of yufka with oil/milk spread on it. Then you add a 5th layer with oil/milk, each layer rippled to fit in the pan. Then, on your 6th and final layer, you lay it over the pan without scrunching it up. This time it is flat, and you cut off the edges (on just that 6th layer) to make a 'lid'. Then you take that 1st layer that you did and pull it up and over the entire thing so as to seal it (like an envelope). You can use any remaining oil/milk on those edges to make it stick. Finally you brush an egg yolk over the very top, then bake it at 350 for 40 minutes.

My 3rd layer with filling on it:

And you get this...mmm....Affiyet Olsen!