Turks are rightly proud of their cuisine, and every village in Turkiye has a signature dish that draws on ingredients native to that specific area, handed down through generations, and made differently in every household.

Some Turkish dishes you’ll find on every street corner or even all over the world, like the ubiquitous doner kebab. Others you’ll never find on a restaurant menu, like Erzincan’s cıvırla, kabak aşı from the Aegean region, or batırık from Mersin. Those are the meals on the sofra at a typical family weekday meal, the food that Mum makes better than anyone else, that triggers nostalgia in the gürbetciler, Turkish people living overseas, and is the first thing they cook on their annual visit to the homeland.

Thanks to the internet, you can find recipes for all types of Turkish food, often adapted for countries where the original ingredients are hard to find. In this edition, we’re going the other way with a recipe that’s only easy in Turkiye, and is familiar to anyone who’s eaten at most popular Altinkum restaurants, sigara börek. It’s so simple it barely counts as a recipe.

Cheat’s Sigara Böreği / Crispy Cheese Pastry

1 packet of triangle-cut pastry from the fridge section of any Turkish supermarket

1 packet of lor cheese, also from the fridge section, decanted into a bowl & loosened with a fork

1/2 bunch of fresh parsley, chopped & mixed into the lor

A bowl of water

Cooking oil in a deep fryer / oil to coat each pastry for airfrying

Spread a single triangle of pastry on a flat surface with the pointy bit pointed away from you and moisten with water, especially at the pointy end.

Take a small tablespoon of lor and parsley and spoon along the flat end of the triangle nearest you in a sausage shape, making sure you don’t go up to the corners.

Start to roll the pastry, starting from the flat end with the lor as if making a roll-up cigarette. Not too tight!

After the first roll, fold in the ends to stop the cheese spilling out. Keep rolling until you have a cylinder shape. Because you’ve moistened the pastry with water it should stick together. If it’s dried out, when you reach the pointy end dab on a bit more water to stick it down.

Put your rolled pastry aside and repeat with the next one triangle. Carry on until you have as many as you want.

For deep frying, carefully put the pastries in the frying basket in the simmering oil, adding them one at a time so they don’t stick together, Cook until golden.

If you’re air frying, brush each pastry with oil to help them crisp, lay them in the basket in a single layer and cook at 200 C for 15 minutes.

You can also oven-cook if you’re doing a lot and you don’t want to deep fry, but they won’t be as crisp. Preheat the oven to 200C, brush the pastries with oil and arrange on a baking tray. Cook for 25 minutes.