Zucchini Börek (Kabak Böreği)

Börek is a common name in Turkey and neighboring regions that were influenced by Ottoman cuisine for a pie made with flaky pastry: phyllo or yufka. Börek can be made in different forms (bundles, rolls, rounds, squares, etc.) and with different fillings (eggplant, ground meat, milk, potato, spinach, and white cheese).

This particular recipe is my mom's signature dish. This is the dish that I asked her to make every time I went back home from boarding school, college or from the States, and that my friends ask her to make whenever they come over for tea, for dinner, or for a visit. I haven't made zucchini börek before simply because it is hard to find Turkish yufka here and phyllo doughs that you can find in the stores are too thin (harder to deal with), starchier (fit better for baklava than börek), and come in rectangles rather than rounds as we have them in Turkey. However, for the first time I haven't been to Turkey over a year now. I decided that I couldn't wait for another year for zucchini börek.


























~30 sheets of phyllo dough=1 box (since they're really thin, a couple will be lost along the way)

for the filling
2-3 zucchinis, grated approximately 4 cups of grated zucchini
3 eggs
1/2 cup finely chopped dill
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh mint or 3 tbsp dry mint flakes
1/2 cup crumbled Turkish white cheese or feta
1 tbsp paprika (or Hungarian paprika)
1 tbsp or less black pepper
salt (depending on how salty the cheese is)
1 tsp spicy red pepper flakes (optional)

for brushing phyllos
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup plain yogurt (nonfat, reduced, or whole)

-Thaw frozen phyllo as indicated on the package.
-Mix well all the ingredients for the filling in a bowl. Set aside for 10-15 minutes.
-It will be a juicy mixture. Squeeze the mixture and pour that excessive juice into a smaller bowl. Add 3 tbsp olive oil and 1/2 cup yogurt into the juice and mix well. You will use this to brush phyllos.
-Place a phyllo, wide side facing you, on the counter. Brush it with the mixture and put another phyllo on top and brush it, too. Since phyllos are too thin, it's better to use two at a time).
-Place filling ~one seventh of zucchini filling on the long side of phyllo and roll up to make a long cigar.
-Grease ~ 11 X 13 or ~11 X 11 oven tray.
-Hold one end of the long cigar and coil roll around to form a spiral shape as in the picture above.
-Repeat brushing, filling, rolling, and coiling until there's no more filling.
-Pour whatever juice left in the brushing and filling bowls on the börek.
-Bake in a preheated oven at 380-390 F until golden brown. Approximately 50 minutes.
-Cut into triangle pie slices. Serve with tea or soda for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

It is not a common practice throughout Turkey, but where I come from, Thrace, we love to eat our savory börek by dipping it into jam, especially into cherry jam.

Vegetarian Stuffed Zucchini Flowers (Zeytinyağlı Kabak Çiçeği Dolması)

In his novel Karıncanın Su İçtiği (Ant Drinking Water), the second volume of a series titled Bir Ada Hikayesi (An Island Story), one of my favorite Turkish writers, Yaşar Kemal, writes about stuffed zucchini flowers in a way that resembles his famous descriptions of cotton fields, horses, snakes, the Taurus mountains, rain, the sea, i.e. nature in general. He writes in meticulous detail about this delicate Aegean dish so that while reading the novel you feel like you almost can taste it. After finishing Karıncanın Su İçtiği, I really wanted to have stuffed zucchini flowers, a delicious dolma dish that I first tasted when I was visiting Bodrum peninsula. Bodrum offers a great variety of Aegean dishes once you can pass its ranked #2 after Istanbul wild nightlife.
Although dealing with delicate flowers might seem difficult, to make stuffed zucchini flower is not harder than any other dolma dish. The demanding part is to find zucchini flowers. If you are already growing zucchini plants, pick flowers early in the morning when they are open and free of bugs. On the other hand, if you don't have a garden you might find zucchini flowers at farmer's markets (possibility:low), flea markets with produce sections (possibility: medium), or at Mexican grocery stores/markets (possibility: high).












serves 4
20 zucchini flowers
1 1/2 cup rice
2 medium onions, very finely chopped or grated
1/3 cup + 2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp currants
2 tbsp pine nuts
1/2 tsp allspice or cinnamon
1 tsp sugar
1 or more tsp salt
juice of 1/2 lemon or 2 tsp pomegranate molasses
1-2 tsp black pepper
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh mint
1/2 cup finely chopped dill
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley (save the stems)
-Trim the stems and remove the stamens from the flower. It might be tricky to remove the stamen; I used a little knife to cut the stamen. Wash the zucchini flowers, check inside for any unwanted guests, and then place them in a bowl of hot (not boiling hot, though) water to soften. Set aside.
-Heat 1/3 cup olive oil in a pot. Add onions and cook for 3-4 minutes.
-Add rice and stir for 5 minutes.
-Add currants, pine nuts, sugar, allspice or cinnamon, black pepper and salt.
-Add 1 cup water and cook on low until water is absorbed. Turn it off.
-Add greens: dill, mint, parsley, and lemon juice or pomegranate molasses. Mix well and set aside to cool down.
-Place the parsley stems that you saved at the bottom of a pot. If you do not have parsley stems you can cover the bottom of the pot with vine leaves or apple skin. Flowers are very delicate so you don't want to put them directly on the pot.
-Drain zucchini flowers. With a small spoon or your fingers stuff each flower with the rice stuffing: gently open up the petals, put the stuffing, and seal the flower by folding the petals one by one around the filling.
-Place stuffed flowers tight on parsley stems (or whatever you have). Sprinkle 2 tbsp olive oil and pour 1 cup of water.
-Find a flat-ish plate that would fir in your pot. Place the plate on stuffed flowers.
-Cook on low until water is absorbed, approximately half an hour.
-Wait at least 20 minutes before taking stuffed zucchini flowers out of the pot.
-Serve warm or cold. Goes well with yogurt.