Gözleme

Gözleme - that recipe I picked up in Woolworths, is a traditional Turkish street food. Well that's what it has become, but originally I believe it was a breakfast food.

One site says that it came from Central Asia but settled in the Anatolian region of Turkey - well Turkey generally, but various sites seemed to think it was primarily Anatolian.

The name is derived from the first part - göz which according to Wikipedia means' compartment' - well that's an obvious reason, but according to somebody else it means 'eye' - for the spots that occur on the pastry when it's cooked. A bit less obvious. I have no idea where the 'leme' bit of the name comes from.

And that's where the authenticity thing ends. This favourite national snack food has spread around the world - well certainly to Australia. There is at least one (probably others) specialist Gözleme café in Melbourne called Göz City - whose offering is shown below. But nowhere did I find anyone ranting on about how it should be made in a particular way with particular ingredients.

The basic concept is very thin pastry stuffed with something and fried on a flat plate. The three main traditional fillings seem to be spinach and cheese (expanded to any kind of greens), spiced meat, and potato and cheese and/or spinach. But, of course, there are now endless variations for the filling, including sweet versions. This comes from the perception by some tourists, of it as a pancake. Which I suppose it almost is.

As to the pastry well anything goes as long as it's thin. As we saw yesterday, the Woolworths version was a cheat's version that used roti. And there are various other cheat's versions out there, that use flatbreads of various kinds. Even Donna Hay who fills her cheat's version, which uses flatbreads with spicy beef, zucchini and havarti gözleme. Personally I think if it has to be thin - and it does seem that this is the real thing about them, then you would be better to use a wrap rather than a flatbread - or at least split the flatbread in half.

If you are making the pastry from scratch, again anything goes, from plain flour plus water, to yeast, yoghurt, baking powder, oil ... Yoghurt seems to be a good idea - apparently it stops it from being brittle. The easier doughs without yeast would be good for kids though - and it was surprising how many websites really thought that this was a good thing to make with kids, and not always by cheating and using some form of bought flatbread. The kid's one shown below has a filling of leek and haloumi and comes from Claire Thomson at The Guardian. It looks a bit messy to eat though. Maybe the filling is too runny.

They're not even very prescriptive about the shape. Some pictures I saw of Turkish village ladies making it seemed to go for a circle which was then folded in half. But then again they also seemed to make it into a square as below. That's a very thin rolling pin - and indeed this seems to be the recommended thing. Not sure where you would find one of them.

You can also roll them up and the cut them into pieces - like so:

Not quite as tempting somehow.

Oh and the other thing that seems to be 'authentic' is to squeeze lemon juice over the finished product. Or serve Turkish pickles with it.

Keeping to the supermarkets I actually found a pretty good video from Coles on the whole process - including how to make a circle into a square. The presenter was Dani Venn and she was good at explaining why as well as how.

Coles also has a couple of recipes at Taste.com and Woolworths has three on their own website. You saw the Cheat's version yesterday, and below are the two others - spinach and feta on the left and beef, pumpkin and spinach on the right. They have two different doughs.

Possibly the best explanation of the whole thing was from a Turkish lady - Ozlem's Turkish Table. Well you would expect the Turks to be the best at it wouldn't you?

When I looked for recipes I was surprised to find that Yotam Ottolenghi had no recipe, and I couldn't find one from Claudia Roden either, which surprised me even more. I believe she does have one somewhere but I cannot find it.

Greg Malouf, however, has a very beautiful version shown at left which uses yulfka pastry. Now I have no idea what yulfka pastry is - one website mentioned that in some places in Turkey it was made with yulfka pastry, which even he did not make himself. I have now had a quick look and it seems to be just flour and water with, maybe, oil, rolled to a thickness somewhere between filo and flatbread. Anyway Greg Malouf offers two fillings - Feta and Dill Gözleme or Gruyère and spinach gözleme. From the picture above he would seem to fold them differently too. And I see he couldn't resist a Middle-Eastern touch by scattering pomegranate seeds around. And did I mention that Donna Hay has five different versions - different pastries, different fillings. Interesting that she should have five different recipes.

The very tempting stack at the top of the page is from Jo Cooks and is called Gözleme with lamb and here on the right is another very tempting looking stack from

Gourmet Traveller. It's called Feta and Greens Gözleme

If I wasn't fasting today I could be tempted to have a go at this right now. I could use up some more of Monika's rainbow chard in the process.