Recipe: Spinach and Feta Turkish Gozleme

One of the things I miss most about living in Sydney is easy access to Turkish Gozlemes! Like Thai food, Turkish food is hard to miss in Sydney. There are Turkish pide and kebab stalls scattered throughout the city, and while gozlemes are not served in every kebab stall, you can almost guarantee to find them at the weekend markets or annual festivals.

I tried my first Turkish gozleme at the Birkenhead outlet mall. CK and I had planned to go there to shop up a storm and buy heaps of clothes and shoes at a discount. We had a plan. We scoped out all of the stores ahead of time online, and knew exactly where we wanted to go and what we wanted to check out. When we arrived on the big day, I thought it would be a good idea to get a bit of food in us before starting our big shopping day. Gozleme Turkish House was the first place we stumbled upon at the food court, so we grabbed a gozleme to go. I had no idea what a gozleme was at the time, but it didn't matter, I was there to shop! The moment the savory fried pastry, filled with spinach & cheese topped with freshly squeezed lemon juice, hit my mouth, I fell in love. I kept going back for more. Each time, trying a new variant: chicken, beef, egg....until I fell into this dark food coma. My belly was so stuffed that I called off the shopping day before it even started.

And that, was the start of my love affair with Turkish gozleme.

I've been reminiscing about the Turkish pastry recently, so instead of waiting for my next trip back to Sydney, I decided to re-create it at home.

This recipe yields 8 servings.

Spinach and Feta Turkish Gozleme
Dough
(Adapted from Almost Bourdain)
- 3 cups of all-purpose flour
- 7g or 1 3/4 tsp of yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 1/4 cups of warm water
- Extra virgin olive oil

Spinach and Feta Filling
- 200g fresh spinach, chopped
- 300g of regular feta crumbled OR 150g light feta crumbled combined with 150g of partly skimmed shredded mozzarella

Method
1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the yeast, sugar and warm water and lightly whisk until completely dissolved. Leave in a warm place for 10 minutes. Combine the yeast water with the flour mixture and form the dough with your hands. Knead for 5 minutes until elastic.

2. Divide the dough into 8 round balls and place them on a greased baking sheet. Cover with a clean cloth and let it stand for 15 minutes or until the dough doubles in size.

3. In another bowl, combine the cheese and chopped spinach. Mix well.

4. On a floured surface, roll out each ball of dough into a rectangle, getting it as thin as possible without breaking it. Spoon the spinach mixture onto half of the rectangle, fold over and then press the edges to seal the gozleme.

5. On a griddle or lightly oiled frying pan, fry the gozleme (2 minutes on each side). Cut the gozleme into 1 inch slices, squeeze fresh lemon juice over top and serve hot.

Traditional spinach and cheese gozleme uses only feta cheese. I tend to use low fat feta, which is a bit saltier than the regular feta, so to balance that out, I mix it with mozzarella cheese. I did not indicate how much filling you should put in each gozleme because it is pretty much to individual taste. Put as much or as little as you like.