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Pastry & pies

Cheese burek

The coiled cheese pie eaten for breakfast across the Balkans, and in Macedonia with a glass of yoghurt.

Recipe from Туѓино Јабано

Cheese burek
Prep
40 min
Cook
40 min
Total
1 hr 20 min
Fasting
Not suitable

Ingredients 9 ingredients

Method

  1. Take the filo out of the fridge half an hour before you start. Cold sheets crack, and a cracked sheet leaks cheese into the tin.
  2. Mash the sirenje and urda together with the eggs, yoghurt and salt. The filling should be spreadable but not runny; if it slumps, work in a little more crumbled cheese.
  3. Mix the oil with the mineral water in a bowl and keep a pastry brush in it. This, and not oil alone, is what you dress every sheet with, because the water is what gives the layers their lift.
  4. Lay a sheet of filo on the worktop with a long edge towards you and brush it lightly all over. Spoon a line of filling along that edge, about two fingers in from it.
  5. Roll the sheet up loosely into a long rope, then curl the rope into a spiral and set it in the middle of an oiled round tin.
  6. Make the rest the same way, coiling each new rope around the last until the tin is full. Brush the top with the oil and water, then with the melted butter.
  7. Bake at 200C for thirty-five to forty minutes, until the coils are deep gold and sound hollow when tapped. Cover with a cloth for ten minutes before cutting, which softens the very top layer.

If you cannot find it

Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.

Sirenje
Feta, crumbled. If it is very salty, soak it in cold water for twenty minutes and leave out the added salt.
Urda
Ricotta, drained overnight in a sieve, or full-fat cottage cheese pressed through a colander.
Macedonian kori
Shop-bought filo. It is thinner and drier, so brush it more generously and work faster.

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