börek a distinctive family of Near Eastern pastries, eaten both during meals and as snacks. The wrapper may be plain bread dough but rich layered pastry is more characteristic, either filo or rough puff paste, made by the familiar sequence of buttering, folding, and rolling. The filling is usually savoury, of meat or cheese, but sweet versions have been made throughout the pastry’s recorded history. Originally, börek was cooked on the saj, the flat sheet of iron used by the nomadic Turks; now the cooking method may be frying or baking (although the Kalmuk Mongols boil their deviant büreg).
