Tasting Ramazan

Now that some of the pressure is off and we only have a half a dozen more offices to visit to wrap up our paperwork, we will begin to bring you up to speed with the small stuff of our lives.
Ramazan started a few weeks ago on September 2, a few days before that our apartment was filled with the smell of baking bread and cheese. Wondering where it was coming from I followed the smell down 3 flights of stairs until I hit the basement.
There our Kapici's wife and friends were making Borek village style over an old gas burner with an upside down pan on it. They used the curved bottom of the pan to lay the wet dough on and then stacked up the Borek's starters that were finished.
Stacks of Borek Await Ramazan

Cooking Borek Village Style


Borek is a thin crispy dough with a variety of fillers added. Cheese borek is the most popular, followed by meat borek and occassionally a sweet borek with milk and sugar. It is almost always served hot and has become a staple in our own kitchen.
Our friends and neighbors had gathered together to make a month's worth of borek. They would then be stacked dry in the house and when needed, would be dampenend with milk and water and cooked again in order to crisp it up and be served hot.

As the only male in this harem in the basement it fell to me to be the taster and approve or advise on the different seasonings being used. Kinda hard to believe we are still losing weight when these responsibilities involve such amazing sacrifices as health and weight...but as I have always said "I want to give something back to the community.