Kol Böreği

One long arm-shaped roll baked at a low temperature, so the inside sets before the outside colours.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains cheese whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 6 fresh yufka sheets
• 400 g white cheese, crumbled
• 2 potatoes, boiled and roughly crushed
• 1 onion, finely chopped and softened
• a handful of parsley, chopped
• 150 ml sunflower oil
• 150 ml milk
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk, for glazing
• 2 teaspoons nigella seeds
• salt and black pepper

Method

1. IT IS BAKED AS ONE LONG ARM AT A LOW TEMPERATURE, and the low oven is the part that is easy to get wrong. A roll this thick -- five or six centimetres through -- needs the heat to reach the middle, and the yufka on the outside will brown long before that happens. 160°C for fifty minutes gets the centre hot and the outside a steady even gold. At 200°C the top is dark in twenty minutes with the innermost layers still pale and doughy, which is the commonest complaint about this börek and is entirely an oven-temperature fault.
2. THE ROLL IS LOOSE, NOT TIGHT. The filling goes in a line along one edge and the sheet is rolled over it without being pulled -- there should be air between the turns. A tightly rolled arm steams into a solid tube; a loose one keeps its layers apart and bakes through faster.
3. THE SHEETS ARE SOFTENED WITH AN OIL-AND-MILK MIXTURE BEFORE ROLLING. Oil, milk and an egg whisked together and brushed over each sheet. Oil alone makes a yufka brittle and it cracks as it is rolled; the milk keeps it pliable and the egg sets the layers so they stay separate. Dry sheets shatter at the first turn.
4. THE ARM IS CURVED INTO THE TRAY, NOT CUT TO FIT. One long roll per sheet, laid in a curve or a spiral so the whole length goes in unbroken. Cut into lengths before baking, the ends dry out and the filling leaks; it is cut AFTER, which is also where the name stops making sense if you cut it first.
5. IT IS CUT WARM AND NOT HOT. Fifteen minutes out of the oven. Hot, the filling is molten and runs out of the cut; cold, the yufka has gone leathery. Warm, it cuts into clean rounds that hold.
6. The potatoes boiled, crushed roughly, and mixed with the cheese, softened onion and parsley. Seasoned.
7. The oil, milk and 1 egg whisked together in a jug.
8. One yufka sheet laid out and brushed all over with the mixture.
9. A line of filling laid along one long edge.
10. ROLLED LOOSELY over the filling into a long arm -- not pulled tight.
11. Laid in a curve on a lined tray, unbroken.
12. The remaining sheets filled and rolled the same way and laid alongside.
13. Brushed with the egg yolk and scattered with nigella seeds.
14. Baked at 160°C -- LOW -- for 50 MINUTES.
15. TESTED: a skewer into the thickest part should come out hot. Pale doughy inner layers mean the oven was too hot, not that it needed longer.
16. Rested 15 MINUTES, then cut across into rounds.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes