She Did It ............

Well, despite all my doubts, elder daughter did eventually cook dinner on Monday evening.  She made Borek the recipe for which she found on the website Binnur's Turkish Cookbook.  It was rather an ambitious first meal and she did require help, it did take two hours, but having said that, the outcome was good.  The girls are now going to take turns to cook - next week is younger daughter's turn - my little foodie is already looking at books and thinking about what she is going to make.

So, for anyone who is interested, here's what we had for dinner on Monday evening:


Main Ingredients:

2 x 7 sheets Filo Pastry (we used two packets of frozen)
4-6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 cup of milk
4 eggs
good pinch of salt

2 x 2L casserole dishes

Filling 1:

300g frozen chopped spinach, squeeze out excess water
1 cup crumbled Feta
1 onion, chopped
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Black Pepper

Filling 2:

250g minced beef
1 onion, sliced
2 tomatoes, skinned and diced
1 small pepper (we omitted the pepper on the grounds that the cook doesn't like them!)
1 tsp dried mint
Salt
Black Pepper


Filling 1:

Put the salt, pepper, oil and onion in a saucepan, cook on medium heat for about 2 - 3 minutes, add the spinach and continue cooking for a few minutes more - take off the heat and add the feta cheese - stir to combine.  Leave to one side.

Filling 2:

Put the salt, pepper, beef and onion in a saucepan, cook on medium heat until the beef is browned (approximately 10 minutes).  Add the tomatoes and pepper (if using) and a teaspoon of dry mint, stir well and cook for another 5 - 10 minutes.  When cooked, take off the heat and leave to one side.

Next we mixed together in a bowl the eggs, olive oil and milk - this mixture is to be poured between the layers of pastry.

Then we used two casserole dishes - greased - and placed two sheets of the pastry in the bottom, with an overhang - as per the picture above - and spread 2 - 3 tablespoons of the liquid egg mixture over the bottom, two more sheets of pastry were laid on top (folded in half) and then spread the meat or spinach mixture over the top - again as per the picture above for the spinach pie - more pastry was placed on top and more liquid egg mix, and then the edges were folded in to secure it all and then a final flourish of the egg mixture. 

The above was repeated using the meat filling.

The recipe said to leave the casserole dishes in the fridge for 2-3 hours before cooking to ensure a more crispy pie.  We didn't have the time for this so we simply baked it in a pre-heated oven  175C/350F for approximately thirty minutes - although the recipe doesn't give a time, it merely says to bake until golden brown!

So, how did they taste?  Both tasted very good and were well cooked but if I had to make a choice I preferred the meat version, although my husband preferred the spinach version!  Just a matter of taste.