Tastes of Mavi Boncuk | fış fış kayıkçı, kayıkçının küreği, akşama fincan böğreği

Mavi Boncuk |

fış fış kayıkçı, kayıkçının küreği
akşama fincan böğreği
kedi böğreği yerse
annem beni döverse
hııı hıı ağlarım
hıı hıı ağlarım

(Turkish lullaby)

The word börek is derived from the Old Turkish bür- "sarmak, burmak" root. The word has passed from our language as "būrek / būrik" to Arabic and "bürek" to Persian.

Cup[1] pastry (fincan böreği)[2] , which is identified with Kastamonu and Artvin regions, is a type of börek that is consumed at tea times. After filling the stuffing with chard and feta cheese, it is fried in a pan. You can enrich the cup pastry served in small portions with dill, parsley and spinach.

börek: pierogi EN[3]from FA būrak بورك  [küç.] 1. hamur ve etle yapılan bir yiyecek, Acem yahnisi veya salma veya buğra aşı, 2. üçgen böreği, sembuse  from FA būra/buġra بوره/بغره Acem yahnisi +ak

[ Ebu Hayyan, Kitabu'l-İdrak, 1312]

börek [[içine et doldurulmuş hamur parçaları, ve şişe dizilmiş olanı 'şiş börek']] (...) çeker börek [şekerli börek]

[TTRum 1530]

dükkân-ı börekci

Note: Farsça sözcüğün bir Türk dilinden alıntı olması ihtimal dahilindedir. 

Yakutian börüök  Slavic languages peirogi, pirog пирог, pirojki пирожки "hamur işi, pişi" ile etimolojik ilişki muğlaktır.  In Bosnia, "börek" (or "burek", as is its local spelling) is only filled with meat, while the rest of the dishes fall under the broader category of "pitas" (or pies): sirnica (filled with cheese), krompiruša (filled with potatoes), zeljanica (filled with cabbage), jabukovača (filled with apples). In Serbia and Croatia, they're all "burek" with different stuffings, so burek with cheese, burek with potatoes, etc.

Börek (Turkish pronunciation: [bœˈɾec]; also burek and other variants) is a family of baked filled pastries made of a thin flaky dough such as phyllo or yufka, typically filled with meat. It is found in the cuisines of Western Asia, the Balkans, the South Caucasus, the Levant, Central Asia, and other parts of Eastern Europe. A börek may be prepared in a large pan and cut into portions after baking, or as individual pastries. The top of the börek is occasionally sprinkled with sesame or nigella seeds.

In Armenia, byorek (բյորեկ) or borek (բորեկ), consists of dough, or phyllo dough, folded into triangles and stuffed with cheese, spinach or ground beef, and the filling is typically spiced. A popular combination is spinach, feta, cottage cheese (or pot cheese) and a splash of anise-flavoured liquor (such as raki).

In Greece, boureki (μπουρέκι [buˈreki]) or bourekaki (μπουρεκάκι [bureˈkaki], the diminutive form of the word), and Cyprus poureki (πουρέκι, in the Greek dialects of the island) are small pastries made with phyllo dough or with pastry crust. Pastries in the börek family are also called pita (pie): tiropita, spanakopita and so on. The traditional filling for spanakopita comprises chopped spinach, feta cheese, onions or spring onions, egg, and seasoning.[36]

A special type of boureki is found in the local cuisine of Crete and especially in the area of Chania. It is a pie filled with sliced zucchini, sliced potatoes, mizithra or feta cheese and spearmint, and may be baked with or without a thick top crust of phyllo.

Bougatsa (Greek μπουγάτσα [buˈɣatsa]) is a Greek variation of a börek which consists of either semolina custard, cheese, or minced meat filling between layers of phyllo, and is said to originate in the city of Serres, an art of pastry brought with the immigrants from Constantinople and is most popular in Thessaloniki, in the Central Macedonia region of Northern Greece.[37] The Greek city of Serres achieved the record for the largest puff pastry on 1 June 2008. It weighed 182.2kg, was 20 metres long, and was made by more than 40 bakers.[38]

In Venetian Corfu, boureki was also called burriche,[39] and filled with meat and leafy greens.

Galaktoboureko is a syrupy phyllo pastry filled with custard, common throughout Greece and Cyprus. In the Epirus, σκερ-μπουρέκ (derives from the Turkish şeker-börek, "sugar-börek") is a small rosewater-flavoured marzipan sweet.

The Pontian Greek piroski (πιροσκί) derives its name from börek too.[40] It's almost identical in name and form to pirozhki (Russian: пирожки), which is of Slavic origin, and popular in Russia and further east.

The Bulgarian version of the pastry, locally called byurek (Cyrillic: бюрек), is typically regarded as a variation of banitsa (баница), a similar Bulgarian dish. Bulgarian byurek is a type of banitsa with cheese (sirene), with the difference being that byurek also has eggs added. In Bulgarian, the word byurek has also come to be applied to other dishes similarly prepared with cheese and eggs, such as chushka byurek | (Cheese Stuffed Peppers) (чушка бюрек), a peeled and roasted pepper filled with cheese, and tikvichka byurek (тиквичка бюрек), blanched or uncooked bits of squash with a cheese and eggs filling

[1] Kastamonu ve Artvin yöreleri ile özdeşleşen fincan böreği, çay saatlerinde tüketilen bir börek çeşididir. İç harcı pazı ve beyaz peynir ile doldurulduktan sonra, tavada kızartılır. Küçük porsiyonlar halinde servis edilen fincan böreğini, isteğe dereotu, maydanoz ve ıspanak ile zenginleştirebilirsiniz.

[2] “Akşama fincan böreği”

İlk basılı Türkçe yemek kitabı olan Melceü’t-Tabbâhîn (Aşçıların Sığınağı) adlı 1844 tarihli eserde pek çok börek tarifi yer alır. Bunlardan birine burada yer verelim:

“Fincan böreği: Tariki: Ânifen zikr olunan yufkalar açıldıkça üç-dört katını hamur tahtasına vaz’ ve öbek öbek iç koyup yine üzerine yufkalar ile örtüldükte üzerine fincan veya zarf ile basıp kat’ edeler. Ba’dehu tavada kızgın yağ içine atarak veyahut tepsi içine dizilip üzerine yağ haşlanıp fırında tabh olunduktan sonra tabağa dizip tenavül buyrula. Bu ince yufka usulü melekeye muhtaçtır veyahut üstattan görülmek lâzımdır.”

Mehmet Kâmil, Melceü’t-Tabbâhîn (Aşçıların Sığınağı), Haz. Cüneyt Kut, Unipro ve Duran Ofset, İstanbul, 1997, s. 46.

Among Ukrainians and the Ukrainian diaspora, they are known as varenyky. The word is the plural form of вареник (varenyk), which derives from Ukrainian вар (var) "boiling liquid", indicating boiling as the primary cooking method for this kind of dumpling. The same term is used in the Mennonite community, sometimes spelled varenikie or wareniki.

Schlutzkrapfen closely resemble pierogi; they are common in Tirol and northern Italy's German-speaking region of South Tyrol, and are occasionally found in Bavaria. Fillings may include meat or potatoes, but the most widespread filling is a combination of spinach and quark (Topfen) or ricotta. Another similar Austrian dish, known as Kärntner Nudel (Carinthian noodles), is made with a wide range of fillings, from meat, mushrooms, potato or quark to apples, pears or mint.These regional specialties differ significantly from the most common Swabian filled dumplings known as Maultaschen.

Bryndzové pirohy is the Slovak term for dumplings filled with sheep milk cheese.

Colțunași is the Romanian term for filled dumplings. It is derived from Greek καλτσούνι, kaltsúni, itself a borrowing from Italian calzoni.

A legend states that Saint Hyacinth fed the people with pierogi during a famine caused by an invasion by the Tatars in 1241. One source theorizes that in the 13th century, pierogi were brought by Hyacinth from the Far East (Asia) via what was then the Kievan Rus'. Some believe pierogi came from China via Marco Polo's expeditions through the Silk Road. None of these legends is supported by evidence, such as the etymological origin of the root pirŭ-.

FURTHER READING AND SOURCE

"Gerhard Doerfer's Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (vol. 2). It turns out this is not an easy word to trace.[0] Doerfer judges it as not originally Turkic, owing to its limited distribution and absence in older texts, and suggests that it more likely came from Iranian languages. So far so good. But, he adds, "Here it also seems to be unetymologizable... If you look for būrak in the Dehkhoda Persian dictionary, you'll see that it was also known as a kind of yogurt soup/stew, with the name perhaps originating as an alternate form of the Turkic (!) bughrā. That, in turn, may be an abbreviation of bughrā-khānī, which you can find described, e.g. in Steingass's dictionary, as a pastry dish dressed with milk or gravy. (It was allegedly named after a ruler of Khwarazm.) So, if you wanted to piece the whole thing together, you could theorize that bughrā-khānī was shortened to bughrā, from which the Persian būrak eventually derived—and then went back into Turkic as börek. This could also involve flexibility in the intended dish, between a stuffed pastry with gravy, and some kind of soup… maybe with dumplings? It wouldn't be the strangest instance of metonymy." 

The word börek comes from Turkish and refers to any dish made with yufka. Tietze proposes that the word comes from the Turkic root bur- 'to twist',. Sevortyan offers various alternative etymologies, all of them based on a fronted vowel /ö/ or /ü/. Tietze's proposed source "bur-" (with a backed vowel /u/) for büräk/börek (with fronted vowels) is not included, because sound harmony would dictate a suffix "-aq" with a harmonised, backed /q/. Turkic languages in Arabic orthography, however, invariably write ك and not ق which rules out "bur-" which has a backed vowel /u/ at its core.

SOURCE 2

"Borek is one of the indispensable ingredients of the rich Front Asian cuisine. According to those who participated in it; There are varieties such as minced meat, cheese, parsley cheese, spinach, potato, eggplant, zucchini, roasted and chicken. On the other hand, there are a lot of pastry types. Pastries according to their shape and structure; water pastry, sleeve pastry, puff pastry, pencil pastry, rose pastry, sheet pastry, cup pastry, burma pastry, thin pastry, lid pastry, mastic pastry, onion pastry, bazaar pastry, pouring mastic pastry, stuffed pastry, tray pastry, milk It is divided into types such as pastry, amulet pastry, chestnut pastry, trotters pastry, dry pastry, bundle pastry, black pepper, leek pastry, sprinkled dough pastry, sawdust pastry, cigarette pastry, palace pastry. According to its people and region; We encounter different varieties such as Hind pastry, Kurdish pastry, Bosnian pastry, Albanian pastry, Nemse pastry, Tatar pastry, Circassian pastry, Thessaloniki pastry, Adapazarı pastry, Laz pastry. Of these, çibörek is also pronounced as raw pastry among the people. According to some sources, it was called çibörek based on the word çi (= delicious) in Kipchak language. Internal contributions of dumplings are increasingly different. For example, eggs, feta cheese and yoghurt are added to Adapazarı pastry. Circassian cheese is added to the Circassian pastry and prepared in a half-moon shape. In this respect, each pastry has its own additive or additives."

See also: A History of Börek | A celebrated dish of the Ottoman Empire that spread far and wide. Alexander Lee [*]| Published in History Today Volume 69 Issue 9 September 2019

"...Börek reflected the harsh life of the herdsmen. Cooked on a saj – a flat-iron griddle, suspended over an open fire or placed on hot stones – it required only those limited foodstuffs which were available on the steppe: the butter and cheese they made themselves from the milk of sheep and goats; the parsley which grew wild in the plains; and the grains that could be bought – or bartered – in markets.

But börek was also a testament to their desire for a more settled existence. Though the Turkic peoples were – and always have been – fiercely proud of their itinerant culture, they could not help envying the comforts of the city, especially the thick oven-baked bread they encountered at market-time. As Charles Perry has noted, they soon gained ‘an obsessive interest’ in making it for themselves. Since they had no ovens of their own, however, they had to emulate its fluffy texture by layering their dough as many times as they could before stuffing it with a savoury filling and frying it.

It was perhaps from this unusual technique that börek took its name. According to the Austrian Turcologist, Andrea Tietze, ‘börek’ comes from the Persian ‘bûrak’, which referred to any dish made with yufka. This, in turn, probably came from the Turkic root, bur-, meaning ‘to twist’ – an allusion to the way thin sheets of dough had to be manipulated to produce a layered effect..."

[*] Alexander Lee is a fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. His latest book is Humanism and Empire: The Imperial Ideal in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 2018).