Description

Sigara böreği — cigarette börek — is one of the most beloved and instantly recognizable of all Turkish pastries: slender, crisp cylinders of thin yufka pastry rolled around a filling of white cheese and fresh herbs, fried in oil until golden and shatteringly crisp. Named for their resemblance to a cigarette, they are fixtures of the Turkish breakfast table, the meze spread, the tea time snack, and the celebratory buffet — appearing wherever people gather and food is meant to bring pleasure.

The Börek Tradition: An Ottoman Legacy

Börek — the broad family of filled, layered, or rolled pastry preparations — is one of the most important and distinctive categories of Turkish cooking, with a history that stretches back to the earliest period of Turkic culinary culture in Central Asia. The basic concept of wrapping or enclosing a filling in thin dough is ancient and widespread, appearing in the food cultures of nearly every civilization that cultivated wheat. But the Ottoman Empire elevated this concept to an extraordinary level of sophistication, developing dozens of distinct börek varieties with different pastry types, fillings, shaping techniques, and cooking methods.

Palace records from the Ottoman period document elaborate börek preparations served at court banquets, made by specialized pastry cooks who worked exclusively on these preparations. The thin, almost translucent yufka dough used in sigara böreği — similar to phyllo but made without the intensive stretching technique of Greek phyllo — was itself a product of considerable skill to produce.

The Filling: White Cheese and Herbs

The classic filling for sigara böreği is a mixture of beyaz peynir (Turkish white cheese, similar to feta but often creamier and less salty) mashed with fresh parsley and sometimes dill. The cheese provides salt and richness, the herbs provide freshness and color, and the combination is perfectly suited to the neutral crispness of the fried pastry.

The rolling technique requires practice: a triangular piece of yufka is placed with the point toward you, the filling placed near the wide end, and the pastry rolled tightly toward the point, tucking in the sides to seal the filling completely. A brushing of water or egg at the tip helps seal the final point securely so the börek doesn’t unravel during frying.

The Frying: The Path to Perfection

Sigara böreği must be fried in enough oil and at high enough temperature to achieve simultaneous crispness all around — oil that is too cool will produce a greasy, soggy result, while oil that is too hot will burn the exterior before the interior is heated through. The perfect sigara böreği emerges from the oil a deep golden color, crackling with crispness, the interior warm and creamy. It should be eaten immediately, while the contrast between the crisp exterior and the yielding filling is at its most dramatic.

Ingredients

• 2 sheets of fresh yufka (or phyllo dough, though yufka is preferred)
• 200g feta cheese or lor peyniri (curd cheese)
• 1/4 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
• Oil for frying
• Water for sealing

Instructions

1. Cut the circular yufka sheets into 8 or 12 triangular wedges, like pizza slices.
2. In a bowl, mix the crumbled feta cheese with the chopped parsley.
3. Place a spoonful of the cheese mixture at the wide end of each triangle.
4. Fold the side corners inward, then roll it tightly towards the tip, resembling a cigar.
5. Dip your finger in water and wet the tip of the triangle to seal the roll.
6. Heat oil in a pan and shallow fry the rolls until golden brown and crispy on all sides.
7. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.