Ready for a Challenge? Suböreği

Don’t get me wrong, I am always up to new challenges in kitchen. But this classic Turkish pastry, called suböreği, is the hardest challenge you can try. The name can be translated as “water patty”. It is a pastry prepared with home made dough, butter and a main ingredient like Turkish style beyaz peynir (white cheese, or Greek feta), or ground meat.

So far so good

It’s almost never easy to work with dough. But if you are handy it is fun. Well, I’m not really handy so I cheated! I know how to roll dough in theory but I’m terrible in practice. So I decided to prepare the dough with KitchenAid’s pasta roller.

Apparently I made twice the dough I need, and maybe 5 times the dough I could handle! But in Turkish we say pilavdan dönenin kaşığı kırılsın.

Pilavdan dönenin kaşığı kırılsın

Literally it’s translated as: whoever backs down from the rice, may his spoon be broken. Meaning: If one refuses to use what they have, he may as well not possess it. Also means: if one starts something there is no going back. In Turkish we have sooo many interesting idioms and proverbs. There is probably one for every situation. Anyway back to the main story…

Anyway…

I rolled the dough with the pasta roller so instead of having 10 large round doughs for two baking sheets, I had 18 long thin doughs. Each of them about two meters! For suböreği you need to blanch the dough for about half a minute in boiling salt water. Salt is important, otherwise the dough will crumble. Then immediately submerge the dough in ice bath/cold water.  Thin line dough is close to impossible for that!

Eventually I managed – somehow…But I was quite tired. So don’t cheat and properly roll the dough by hand. Also, it’s best to be two to cook this. Just saying… You don’t have to listen, it is your challenge after all!

You need melted butter after each layer of dough and some of the main ingredient. 5-6 level should be enough. Brush the last layer of dough with egg yolk and cook in oven preheated to 180°C/350°F. After preparing the börek, I was so tired that I needed to rest half an hour before brushing with egg and cooking!

But I need to say:

That is one thing I am never ever ever ever cooking alone again.Unless I forget…