Doing the impossible… Making Burek!

Possibly the best “hangover” food, better than the kebab…no offence!

I’ve been looking for a Burek recipe for a while and I recently came across two, one in a Macedonian newspaper and a Serbian blog. I couldn’t contain my excitement at potentially making this traditional dish that originated from the Turks-Macedonia was under Ottoman rule for over 500 years. Burek is perceived as being extremely difficult and labour intensive, but it’s not at all and definitely worth making! However, my thighs and bum weren’t too happy about the possibility of me inhaling a few too many slices, but I came to an agreement with the lower part of my body, 100 squats and lunges! Things I’d do for food! The reason for the painful squats is that part of the process of making the Burek, is soaking the dough in oil for 20 min. Lets face it, anything with fat involved is usually tastier anyway…in moderation.

As produce is extremely expensive here, flour and water have become an important part of my cooking experiments. In-fact, the most delicious specialties in Macedonia are essentially made from just flour and water with a few added ingredients. Burek being one of them. Burek is what most of my non-Macedonian friends associate Macedonia with. Layers of thin pastry, upon layers of this pastry filled with traditional stuffings of meat and onion, cheese, cheese and spinach, and modern variants, pizza, and sour cherries . To my friends in Australia and Macedonia it’s a late night snack after a big night, but traditionally its eaten for breakfast in the Balkans with natural yogurt or a glass of buttermilk.

Ingredients:

500g flour

800g pork mince

2 onions, finely diced

300ml water

300ml vegetable oil

1 teaspoon butter

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon vegeta (vegetable seasoning found in all supermarkets or Balkan specialty deli’s)

Directions:

To make the dough, mix the flour, salt and water together with your hand, adding the water gradually as you may not need it all. Knead the dough till soft and elastic. Shape into a ball and divide into quarters.

Shape each piece into a ball. With your hand, flatten each ball, roughly measuring about 18 cm diameter and soak in the oil for 20 minutes. Saute the onions in a frying pan on medium heat till they’re soft and caramelised. Add the mince, salt and pepper and vegeta and fry till the meat is completely cooked through. Make sure you taste the meat, add extra seasoning if needed. Put aside to cool.

Take a piece of dough out of the oil, place it directly onto your workbench and flatten it gently with your hands, working from the middle out. It should be really easy to work with. You’ll notice it will become transparent and start to have the consistency of bubble gum in the middle, but thicker around the edges. This means your on the right track. Now, start slowly pulling the edges outward so that your stretching the dough even more. Stop if you feel like the dough will rip. Place the meat filling in the middle of the dough. Preheat oven at 200°C.

Cut the thicker edges off with scissors or a knife. Wrap the dough over the meat so it looks like a neat parcel. Gently lift off the bench and transfer to a large plate. Take another piece of dough from the oil and repeat the process of flattening, stretching and putting the meat on the dough. Place the parcel you’ve set aside, on top of the meat and wrap it over the parcel.

Continue this process with the remaining dough till you get one parcel.

Place in a round baking tin. I put mine in a cake tin as that’s all I had.

Bake in the oven at 200°C for 1 hour, until golden brown.

Serve with natural yogurt or buttermilk.

Note: The traditional method calls for 200g oil and 200g pork fat for the dough to soak in. Using just oil turned out great. Don’t throw away the oil, you can reuse it. Can’t wait to try the other filling variations!