In the kitchen
What do you make with yufka? Four classics
Yufka is not a dish but a base. What you make with it depends on how you fold, roll or stack it. Four ways that come back in every Turkish kitchen.
Börek
Layers of yufka with a filling in between, baked in the oven. The classic filling is spinach with white cheese, but minced meat with onion or potato with herbs works just as well.
Brush each layer thinly with oil or melted butter. That is what keeps the layers apart and gives the flaky texture; skip it and you end up with one compact slab.
Gözleme
A sheet folded double around a thin filling, cooked on a dry griddle. Quick to make, and best served by a thin sheet, because it has to cook through in a couple of minutes.
Less filling is better than more here: gözleme should stay flat.
Dürüm
Meat, vegetables and sauce in a large sheet, rolled up tightly. Lay the filling in a strip one third of the way along the sheet, fold in the sides and roll from the filled side.
Leave the roll seam side down for half a minute before you cut it. Then it stays closed.
Çiğköfte rolls
A strip of yufka with lettuce, çiğköfte, pomegranate molasses and lemon, rolled up like a cigar. It is eaten cold and is one of the best-selling uses in Turkish shops.
The sheet may be thin here: it is about the filling, not the dough.