Traditional Turkish 'Börek' with Courgettes and Cheese

Making bourek (börek) or filo pastry is such a heart-warming activitiy that reminds me of my childhood days, when my grandmother would come and bring fresh filo pastry to make yummy stuff. Generally it would be bourek or fried small envelope pastries made with filo. My paternal grandmother used to make the best courgette filo pastry with milk, and however much I try, I cannot attain the same texture. There are numerous delicious recipes you can make by using filo pastry (ready made or home made). It is a good snack to have at home, great for a quick breakfast on work days, an amazing afternoon tea and if you are making it yourself, you know what's inside, thus you can make it healthy.

  
Ingredients:

4 sheets of big filo pastry (or 8 sheets of Greek baklava filo pastry)
2 small courgettes
400 gr of white cheese (or Greek feta cheese)
1 egg white
A splash of milk
Olive oil
Salt, pepper
Dry mint
Dry red chilli

How to:

1. First, let's start with the courgettes. Wash and grate them in a bowl, add the cheese, one egg white, 2 or 3 tablespoons of milk, a pinch of salt, half a teaspoon of black pepper, 1-2 teaspoons of dry mint and a sprinkling of dry chilli. Mix well in a bowl and set aside.

2. Take a big oven tray and lightly grease it with olive oil.

If you are using big Turkish filo pastries, the filo should be bigger than the tray, so keep the bigger parts drooping outside of the tray, so that you can overlap it on top of everything and it will look like a big envelope.
If you are using Greek filo sheets, they may be the same size as your tray, which is fine.

Lay the first filo sheet and sprinkle with some extra virgin olive oil. Lay your filo pastries one by one and between each layer keep spreading olive oil. This will make your bourek very crunchy.

3. Once you have used a little bit more than half of your filo pastries, take the bowl with the courgettes and cheese mixture and pour it over the filos, spread evenly and add a splash of milk (yes, even more milk).

4. Keep layering the filos, brushing with olive oil in every layer. And when you come to the last filo, put it on top firmly. If you are using big Turkish filo pastries, fold the overlapping bit on top and tuck in from the sides, so you will have a big envelope kind of bourek.

5. Now brush the top layer with generous amount of extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle some sesame seeds and black cumin (nigella sativa) seeds and sprinkle a little bit of water with your hands.

6. Bake in the preheated oven of 200 degrees for 45 minutes or until it rises and is golden brown.

 

 7. Leave to cool before you slice your bourek. Perfect for tea time, or for kids when they come back from school. I know because I used to love it so much! Eat and enjoy. 

 Utterly delicious snack for the afternoons when you feel peckish! 

Cheese and Spinach Filo Pie

Filo pastry with cheese and spinach is my all time favourite Turkish pastry. This saturday I wanted to make a pie but I couldn't be bothered with making a dough, chilling it, cooking it blind and so on. Instead I used the miraculous 'filo pastries'. By using these thin sheets I not only saved time, but also avoided using butter in the dough mixture. In this way we have a lighter -and equally tasty- savoury pie.You might argue that a 'pie' cannot be light, but believe me this is really not heavy on carbs because you can adjust the layer of filo. You can make the base thick or thin. This can be a vegetarian light dinner with some tomato salad on the side or you can toss some chicken breast with spices to complete your protein in your meal (as I did here). Serve when warm or directly out of the oven -my mouth is watering just thinking about the smell!

Ingredients:
2 sheets of filo pastry
3 eggs
3 soup spoons of yoghurt
1 handful of shallots
400 gr of spinach (one big bunch)
1 sausage (or if you are in Turkey, sucuk)
300 grams of feta cheese 
Salt, pepper
1 teaspoon of dried basil
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
Melting cheese to grate on top
Olive oil

How to:
1. I prepared this dish for two and my first preparation was to put some olive oil on a small round dish and turn the oven on 175 degrees Celsius.
2. After this I started to layer the sheets of filo pastry. The pastry I got from our 'yufka' shop were pretty big, so two of them made a 5 layer base and it was enough for us. You can decide how thick you like your pie base to be, just don't forget to lightly brush every layer with olive oil. It will make your pie filo yummy. Alternatively, you can add some milk, which will make the filo very soft. We do it inside some 'boreks' but I chose to put only olive oil for this recipe. 
3. Next, whisk your eggs in a bowl. Add the shallots inside; cut the shallots into two depending on their size. If you don't have any shallots, you can also use white onion but with shallots, the onion taste is subtler.
4. Add yoghurt, salt, pepper, basil, nutmeg and feta cheese and mix all of them carefully. Finally, add the washed and dried spinach and mix.
5. Before you add the mixture on top of the filo pastry, there is an important tip here. As spinach contains a lot of water inside, it can get juicy while baking in the oven and it might make your pie a bit soggy. In order to prevent this, you can pour a handful of bulghur on top of your filo base. You won't notice or taste bulghur while eating the pie. If you don't do it, still it won't affect the overall result so much.
6. If you're a vegetarian, you can skip this step but I wanted to make my quick pie tastier, so I cut a piece of 'sucuk' (you can use a spicy beef sausage or a thin choritzo instead) into tiny pieces and dumped them on top of the mixture. Alternatively, you can add dried tomatoes instead. :)
7. Once you cover everything with any grated cheese you fancy (in this dish I used traditional Turkish 'fresh kasar' cheese), your pie is ready to bake in the oven in 175 degrees for 45 minutes.
8. This is a very practical recipe that you can prepare for tea time, afternoon snacks, for brunch guests or for a light dinner as I did here. Since it would be our dinner, I wanted to add some sautéed chicken breasts to go with it. Chop the chicken breasts into chunks, cook in with some garlic, tomato paste, milk and olive oil in high heat. They are ready in 15 minutes. Bon apetite! 

 Step by step, filo pie in the making.

 My mouth starts to water...

The result and I wish I could add the amazing smell of melted cheese and spicy Turkish sausage. Yum!