![]() Love the story? Follow the author here: Twitter. I feel it's important to keep food traditions going somehow and pass on the flavours to the next generation, and this is my way of making sure that happens." "This modern version of borek is a great way to recreate old family recipes when your time is poor. Serve the pie with a Greek Mediterranean salad rich in olive oil, vinegar and salt or with chutney. "These are the two things my nana always said you can never use enough of to make the pie taste delicious." "This is very much a cheat's version of borek, but one that you can make from scratch and enjoy more often, using any vegetable filling of your choice, such as capsicum, tomato and onion, or halloumi with spinach."Ĭatherine suggests brushing plenty of butter onto the pastry and being generous with the salt. She switched out the homemade pastry for the packaged kind and created a filling of pumpkin and feta cheese. "One day I was craving borek, but I knew I couldn't make the traditional pie, so instead, I started experimenting with the original recipe with the aim to make a version that was less time-consuming to prepare, but still retained the experience of eating a deeply flavoursome pie," she says. ![]() "This modern version of borek is a great way to recreate old family recipes when your time poor." While Sherifee passed on the art of making traditional borek to her daughter, Catherine's aunty Sally (who still makes it for special events and family occasions), Catherine has been able to recreate a similar one with a modern twist. Sherifee's other fillings included eggs or chicken with spinach and cheese. The family's preferred pie filling was the Albanian lamb, capsicum and tomato combination. She would also prepare extra pies and pass them on to family members to deep freeze and enjoy later. Sherifee would bake the pie about once a month, but she also made it for Bayrami, the Turkish 'Feast of the Sacrifice', birthdays and engagement parties. I think she knew, and rightly so, that we weren't delicate enough to not break the pastry, therefore I would normally just watch very closely and try to help with offcuts of dough." "One of Nana's biggest challenges was actually letting us help. "Nana would clear the kitchen and get to work for a whole day, making the dough on the flour-covered kitchen table, so she could roll out the pastry and make it thin enough that it wouldn't break, as that was the real skill when it came to the pie," says Catherine. "That's when granddad began to teach nana how to make traditional Albanian dishes, he himself had learned from his own mother. And gradually, the family favourite became borek, a traditional Albanian pie-like dish."īorek usually takes considerable time to make from scratch, given it's made with multiple layers of handmade pastry and each sheet is slathered with plenty of butter. "That's when Granddad began to teach Nana how to make traditional Albanian dishes, which he himself had learned from his own mother. And gradually, the family favourite became borek, a traditional Albanian pie-like dish," says Catherine. When Sherifee and Abas tied the knot, Sherifee nominated herself as the family chef, even though she didn't know how to cook, mostly to avoid fieldwork. Both this and the cold pastry will help stop the pastry shrinking too much.įinally, try not to cut and serve it on a table low enough for a toddler to reach, it might go before you get a chance to try it yourself.At 17 years of age, Sherifee arrived by boat with her two female cousins from Cyprus to Melbourne where she met Abas. When you neaten off the edges, trim the pastry outwards so it almost sticks the edges to the dish/tin.Use the rolling pin to help you lift up the pastry (as in photo above) and slide your dish underneath. ![]() ![]() The key is to use cold butter and cold water for the pastry then chill before you roll out and put in your dish/tin.You can also use chunks from a larger pumpkin, though it is less traditional. I suspect being a semi-enclosed space means it steams the inside as it cooks. Having tried inverted, face up and as chunks, it cooks much more evenly and quicker when left as a half. First, if you are making your own pumpkin puree, keep the half pumpkin intact and put it on the tray cut side down to roast.A few tips I have picked up to make things easier for you.
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