Cooking Recipe Cheese-Filled Phyllo Pastry (Cigarro Burek)
Recipe Ingredients
Directions
Throughout the Middle East, bureks are made by folding buttered,
cheese-filled phyllo dough into little triangular shapes. Cigarro
bureks taste the same but, as the name implies, are rolled into
cylindrical shapes resembling small cigars. Bureks, frozen unbaked,
can go directly from the freezer into a preheated 375 F oven to make
an instant hors d'oeuvre.
Makes 40
Defrost the phyllo dough and return the remainder to the freezer.
Butter a cookie sheet. Melt the butter and remove from the heat.
Preheat the oven to 375F.
Mix the feta and cream cheese with the egg and herbs and set aside.
Layout one sheet of phyllo dough on a counter. (Keep the remaining
dough covered with a slightly damp towel to prevent its drying out.)
Brush the sheet of dough with some melted butter. Cut it the short
way into 5 strips, about 3x10 inches each. Place 1 1/2 teaspoons of
the filling at one end of each strip. Roll the strips into cylinders
about 1/2 inch in diameter. Continue until all of the dough has been
cut, filled, and rolled.
Arrange 2 to 3 cylinder per person on the cookie sheet and brush them
with more butter. (Freeze the rest of the cylinders, unbaked, for
use at another time.) Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the
cylinders are well browned and very flaky.
From MONDAY NIGHT AT NARSAI'S by Narsai M. David and Doris Muscatine.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Posted by HOWARD WITTENBERG, Prodigy ID# BCWX27A.