The CRISPY Savoury Pastry You'll Love

come here a little bit closer listen and that's what you call crispy cheese i've got to say boric is one of the greatest foods i've cooked on the channel this spiral shaped one has a classic spinach and fatter filling it's crispy on the top and bottom yet still soft on the inside like a croissant these cigar shaped ones are filled with a herby cheese mixture and they're fried so the outside goes all crispy i find them crazy addictive and i think we've just unlocked a whole new world of amazing pastries first up let's talk fillings there's absolutely no reason why you can't just stuff these with any filling you can think of the two we're doing today are the absolute classics of spinach and cheese but a quick google will show you hundreds of fillings served all over the balkans where boric is eaten here's some with minced beef and another with potato that i spotted in the freezers at the supermarket if you want more ideas you can make any of the fillings from my fathayo video or even the ones from last year's sambusak video personally though i like to start with a classic recipe before bastardizing any dish hence this delicious spinach slice it all starts with a literal mountain of fresh spinach it looks stupid but it's good fun to chop through with a sharp knife you want to roughly chop 600 grams of spinach so each leaf is cut into three to four pieces and looks kind of like this next up you'll take one onion and you'll chop this to a small dice which i can finally do thanks to my newly sharpened knife get your onions about this small then place a pan on the stove and pour in two tablespoons of olive oil heat this over medium-high heat then add in the chopped onions and start sauteing them in the oil let them cook for about five to six minutes then when they're softened and they're just starting to brown you could throw in the spinach in hindsight i didn't need to add all of the spinach in one go but it kinda looks cool and you can see why we needed that mountain once the leaves will stir the pan well and you'll continue to cook these for about three minutes more after that you'll take a bowl and place a strainer in it then add all of the hot spinach straight from the pan the bowl will begin filling with any leftover spinach liquid and you want to set this aside for at least half an hour to drain off as much water as you can once the spinach has drained throughout the water then toss the spinach right into the bowl now add in 400 grams of aged feta cheese or some other soft white cheese and this just needs to be roughly crumbled into the bowl for seasonings you'll need to add half a teaspoon of salt half a teaspoon of black pepper and if you can get it half a teaspoon of aleppo pepper mix that all together thoroughly and then your spinach filling is done it'll have a delicious leafy green flavor with little pockets of cheese for some salty goodness now if it's cheesiness that your heart desires well our cheese filling might just be the answer it's made with two different cheeses soft white cheese and stretchy turkish kashar first up you'll take 250 grams of kashar and shredded on the large side of a grater this will give the cheese feeling loads of stretchy goodness but if you can't find it feel free to use mozzarella the other cheese is a generic middle eastern star white cheese it's kind of like feta cheese but quite a bit milder and a lot creamier this needs to be crumbled over the koshar cheese and it will give our mixture some beautiful gooeyness mix the two together and then we need to prepare some parsley instead of wasting your time picking the individual leaves from the stems try my favorite kitchen hack which involves pulling the parsley through the holes of grater this trick is pure magic and it will make quick work of the 60 grams of parsley you'll need once you have a pile of leaves like this you need to mince it with your knife so it ends up quite small and so it doesn't puncture the pastry that will be folding that gets added to the cheese as well as one tablespoon of nigella seeds and half a teaspoon of black pepper the last ingredient is totally optional and it's a single egg which i find helps bind all of the ingredients together give everything a really thorough mix and you'll have a fantastic cheese filling that looks like this this is going to melt to perfection once heated and my god is it tasty we're pretty much ready to assemble our boric but before we do that there's one component that we need to make which in turkey is called the sauce this softens the paste we're using and will help bind it together so it doesn't leak to make it you'll crack two eggs into a bowl then you'll beat them together until well scrambled pour in 150 milliliters of olive oil and then continue to whisk it into the eggs until it's all been well incorporated lastly you'll add in 200 grams of yogurt and then mix this again to make sure it's all combined this makes plenty of the sauce and was enough for both types of borax so you could probably get away with making half the amount now when it comes to making the boric you'll need to get yourself some yufka pastry and the kind that you buy depends upon which shape you're making i got a package of the pre-cut triangle ones for the cigar boric and i pack out the regular sheets for the spiral one if you can't find yuffa you could probably use filo or some puff pastry instead what makes the ufc special is that it's a lot softer than filo but unfortunately it's also more delicate and the pack that i got had loads of tears surprisingly this still turned out really good and it seemed that even if you're you have cutters it won't affect the final appearance first up we'll assemble the more difficult one which is the spiral borek you'll begin by cutting your yufka sheets in half and when you're doing this look for the tears in your pastry are cut in the same direction so they're hidden when you roll once cut in half you can begin making the spiral take a half sheet of the yufka then begin lathering it in the sauce i found that a pastry brush works really well for this and you want to cover the entire sheet in a good layer once covered you'll add on the spinach and you want to place it in a line about three to four centimeters from the cut edge this line should go most of the way from one end of the pastry to the other and you don't want to add a ton of the filling just clumps of it here and there when it looks something like this you'll begin to roll it and you should try to roll the entire length at the same time so it doesn't tear keep rolling it all the way to the bottom and you'll have a pastry sausage that looks like this now you use the palm of your hands and start curling it into a spiral i started freaking out because the pastry was so delicate and it kept tearing but as you'll see later it really doesn't matter when i had this triangular looking spiral i carefully lifted it up and placed it in a sheet lined baking dish this used to go into the center and will basically make more of the pastry sausages and wrap them around the spiral the second one i made had the same issue with loads of cracking but when i placed it in the pan and pretty much hit all of the cracks from the first one then for my third and fourth layer the pastry was just all torn from the packet so i sourced up the pastry stacked on another sheet then sourced that again before filling and rolling this did make the pastry a bit thicker but as you can see it held up really well the final two layers went into the tray and after a bit of fiddling around this is what i was left with as you can see all those cracks are well hidden and just like a certain country we can treat this crack epidemic like it doesn't exist all you need to do now is to flatten the top of the pastry so it doesn't have any sharp edges then you'll lather the whole thing in some of the remaining sauce finally you'll sprinkle this with some seeds and i used a few pinches of sesame and some of the nigella seeds we used earlier after all that heartbreak with the broken layers i was so relieved it looked presentable and i was super excited to cook it so into a 180 degree celsius oven it went to bake for about 45 minutes to an hour it came out of the oven looking all beautiful and crispy and you can hear just how crunchy the edges are you should let this cool for at least half an hour before removing it from the tray then use a sharp bread knife to cut it into six equal slices now for the big reveal and you can see that fantastic cross section formed by each of the spirals the last two are a bit thicker because the extra layer of pastry but honestly it's still a slight to behold for the sagara boric the process is a lot simpler you'll get your triangles of yufka pastry or cut your yufka sheets into a triangular shape and you'll place it with the rounded edge facing towards you leave a gap of about two centimeters then begin placing your cheese mixture in the line this should go most of the way across leaving an edge from a gap of about three to four centimeters once you have a line like this you'll tuck both sides of the pastry over the filling then you grab the bottom side and fold that over as well all that's left to do is to continue rolling away from you until you're about three centimeters from the end give that tip a dab of the sauce or some egg wash and then finish rolling it the rest of the way you can see why these got the name sigara boric and they're super easy to make three or four at a time i had enough for 24 rolls and all that's left to do is to fry them place a pan on your stove over medium heat then pour in enough oil to shallow fry the borax while that's heating take an oven tray and lining with some paper towels then top with a wire rack so the borax can drain without going soggy you'll know your oil is ready by dipping a boric into the oil and it should just bubble like this one unfortunately my stove is a piece of crap so when i added in the borax the oil cooled down way too much i also realized i added way too much oil because with the boric in there they were more than halfway submerged that first batch took way too long to cook so i moved over to my actual stove which the og subscribers will remember and now it was too hot so the barrack burnt after cleaning the oil and turning heat to medium i finally figured out the right way to cook these and that's by turning them every 15 to 30 seconds with that in mind i could cook four at a time and by the time i was done flipping the last one over it will be time to flip the first one again in total they only take two to three minutes in the pan and you'll pull them out once they're golden brown so they're super quick to prepare let these drain on the rack for a couple of minutes and then they're ready to serve right away of course ignore the ones i burnt earlier these were a sad yet delicious lesson in frying temperatures there isn't really much else you need to do other than crack into them and enjoy their gooey cheesy interior come here a little bit closer listen and that's what you call crispy cheese i'm a lovely spinach spiral crispy on the top and bottom soft on the inside so so good personally i'm having a hard time choosing between them on one hand i love the cheese and on the other hand the spinach is glorious now click here for my favorite savory pie [Music]

Channel: Middle Eats

Views: 63,717

Keywords: Middle Eats, Borek, Cheese Borek, Spinach Borek, Borek recipe, How to make borek, crispy borek, cheese Borek recipe, spinach Borek recipe, cigar Borek, Börek, sigara Borek, filo roll, filo spiral, pastry spiral, pastry roll, spinach pastry, cheese pastry, cheese pastry roll

Id: 1Tyi9an32Ow

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 13 2022