Name: Istanbul Borek
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 1 h 5 min
Yield: Makes 24 boreks
Cuisine: Turkish
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley; 1 teaspoon cornstarch; 1 cup fresh mint, or 1 teaspoon mint flakes; 1 clove garlic, crushed, peeled and chopped; 1 small cucumber, seeded and grated; ½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper; 2 cups plain yogurt, beaten; 1 pound zucchini, peeled and grated, all juice blotted out; 2 packages yufka pastry leaves,* removed from packaging, covered with a dish towel to prevent drying; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 egg, lightly beaten; ½ pound feta cheese, grated; 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 1 teaspoon dried mint

Preparation info

Makes
24
boreks

Difficulty
Easy
Ready in
1 hr 5

Appears in

Silk Road Cooking

By Najmieh Batmanglij

Published 2000

About

Boreks are a family of Near Eastern filled pastries, so popular that at one time in Istanbul there were thousands of borek shops—many more than there were bakeries. The name seems to derive from the Turkish bobreg, meaning “kidney,” a possible reference to one of the shapes of this pastry. Another indication of the importance of this pastry is a fourteenth-century Persian poem by Boshaq al Atameh, which describes a battle between the borek and the pilaf, personified as two