This Green Leaves Recipe is a delicious vegetarian burek recipe. It is one of the Albanian recipes, which usually cooks in March when the green leaves are fresh. This is a vegetarian second plate.
Green Leaves Burek is a recipe that in some provinces cooks for Summer Day, and in some others, it cooks for the Sultan Novruz holiday. According to tradition, some regions choose to put a coin inside this burek. They separate it into portions for the family members. The person that gets the coin spends it to buy one kg of salt.
We recommend eating as much as possible all these kinds of ingredients in this period of the year. They help to clean our organism and to eat healthily daily.
Same as the Japrak recipe, here we used all the wild cabbages we could find.
If you could not find so many green leaves, you can choose to cook your burek with Nettles, Spinach, Leeks, Green onions, etc.
Ingredients
- 500 g of all-purpose flour
- 250 ml of water
- a little salt
- 100 ml corn oil, olive oil, or sunflower oil f the phyllo layers
- corn starch for rolling
- Nettles
- fresh Poppy leaves
- Spinach
- Thistle
- Sorrel
- Swiss chard
- Spring onion
- various fresh herbs: parsley, dill, mint, fresh cerely leaves, fresh garlic, basil, etc.
- 250-300 ml of milk
- 3-4 tbsp of cornflour
- olive oil, salt, pepper
Directions
Preparation of Herbs
- We will wash all the herbs and green leaves well. Clean them from the roots if they have, and we will put them in water with salt and baking soda for a few minutes. It makes all the soil perceive at the bottom of the sink tub.
- Rinse them well in running water to clean properly.
Filling cooking
- First, cut the spring onion finely. In a saucepan, add a little olive oil and the onion and sauté it for a few minutes on medium heat.
- Cut the herbs and green leaves finely and place it all in a deep saucepan with a lid. We add salt, which will help them release water faster and preserve their green color.
- When we see that herbs decreased their volume, we will add olive oil and fried spring onion.
- Cook the herbs for 15-20 minutes until they tender properly. Add a little milk and cook well.
- We will mix the cornflour in a glass of milk and add it to the cooked green leaves. This mass will cause the filling to bond and become more creamy. I add considerable olive oil as it gives it a lot of flavors. In the end, add finely cut fresh parsley, dill, mint, basil, etc. We add them at the end so as not to lose their taste.
- Let it cool and continue with the preparation of the phyllo dough.
Phyllo Dough and rolling
- Knead the dough with flour, salt, and water. Let’s make a soft dough and let it rest for about 30 minutes.
- Divide the phyllo dough into 15-16 small pieces, which we round and leave aside.
- First, we open them in discs with a diameter of 20 cm with starch and roller.
- We will make five large phyllo layers with three small discs, which we coat with each-other with corn oil or olive oil.
- You can choose to throw the filling in a single place or divide it into two parts. I chose the second one.
- We will grease the pan, add three phyllo layers down, which we sprinkle with oil, and throw 1/2 of the filling above. Add a phyllo layer and toss the rest of the filling.
- Finally, fold the burek sides and add the last layer nicely, covering all the corners and sides.
- Sprinkle with oil, cut the pie into pieces and bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for 30 minutes.
- Once cooked, let it cool and serve immediately.This burek can also serve cold or at room temperature.
This burek can also serve cold or at room temperature.