Fried Meat Pies (Çiğ Börek)


This recipe is from my childhood, my nany used to make these mostly in spring and early summer. She would serve them with plain yoghurt and salad. It was one of those recipes that you would change all your plans to be there when it is cooked.

Dough
2 Cups Flour
1 Cup Oat Meal
1 Egg
Salt and Pepper to taste

Make a dough with the ingredients above, by adding water. In Turkish dough recipes to understand if the dough had enough water we say it should feel the same as the bottom of your ear. It is always a joke in our cooking classes. People ask me if it is a granny ear or a young girls ear. I would say it is a mature womens ear :) Once you make the dough, make small balls about the size of a walnut, and let these balls stay under damp cloth for a minimum of 30 minutes.


Filling
1/2 Kilo's ground meat ( 30% lamb, 70% beef you can substitude lamb with pork if you like)
1/2 cup grated tomato
We buy edible greens in bunches here in Bodrum, and use one bunch in this recipe. We slice the greens
very thinly and it should fill a cup. It can be spinach, beat root leaves or chard or any edible green.
3 Spring Onions
3 Fresh garlic ( if you can not find it you can use crushed garlic )
1/2 cup finally chopped parsley
Salt, pepper to taste

First,I always say kill the onions and the garlic meaning add salt and pepper to the chopped garlic and onions and squeeze them with your hand until they are juicy, than add all the other ingredients like making meat balls. When the filling is ready than you can line the dough. Each ball will make one "borek"
Put the filling on one side and flip over the other to close it and with a pastry cutter seal the borek.
than you can pan fry the boreks and should serve immediately with salad and yoghurt.
Afiyet Olsun ! ( Bon Apetite)

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