Yufka Mantısı

  

Please, if you do one thing in the kitchen over the next few days or weeks, just make this. Yufka Mantısı translates as “pastry mantı (homemade pasta-like dumplings), and it’s a bit of a showstopper to look at, but even more so in flavour.

Using beautiful handmade Turkish yufka (a thin Turkish pastry, perfect for savoury börek, which I didn’t make but you can buy here), the sheets of pastry are stuffed full of a spiced chicken kofte mixture, rolled, cut, lined up, brushed with butter, baked, drizzled with a buttery, tomatoey chicken stock mixture, baked a little more, then served with garlic yoghurt and a pul biber (Turkish chilli flakes), dried mint and red-pepper paste butter similar to the elements of a traditional mantı. It’s also a little like my favourite beyti kebab, but with a mixture of textures; as the sheets of filo crisp up around the edges and on the top of the yufka, there is an inevitable crunch to the exterior of the pastry that contrasts with the softer and unctuous centre, reminiscent of beautiful homemade mantı.

 
This is one for the family and one to (eventually) impress your guests with, but you could also cook (for a little less time) the rolls of köfte-stuffed yufka in smaller güvec style dishes and cool and freeze (not adding the yoghurt and melted butter), then defrost, reheat until heated through and crispy on the outside, and serve as above but as individual portions.

NOTES:

*I only use ¾ tsp salt in the filling mixture as I find that the sweet red pepper paste can be a little salty, as well as the addition of the stock.

*I make this with chicken, but you could, of course, use beef or lamb mince, just make sure that it’s nice and fatty otherwise the mixture could dry out whilst cooking. Also, I urge you to try it with the chicken first, as it’s just divine and provides a deliciously alternative flavour to the combination we usually associate with börek or mantı.
 

*make it veggie by using cooked butternut squash, spinach and feta in the filling with all the remaining ingredients minus the meat and yoghurt in the filling mixture below. 

RECIPE

For the filling:

1 large onion, peeled and roughly chopped
30g flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
500g chicken thigh fillets, skinless and boneless, cut into bitesize chunks
4 large cloves garlic, finely grated
1 tsp dried mint
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp pul biber
¾ tsp ground black pepper
¾ tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp thick natural yoghurt
1 tbsp sweet Turkish red pepper paste (tatlı biber salçası)
 
3 large sheets of large round yufka (they are usually around 75-80cm in diameter)
30g butter, melted, for brushing with
 
For the stock
1 tbsp olive oil
Knob of butter
1 tbsp sweet Turkish red pepper paste
½ chicken stock cube
300ml boiling hot water
 
For the Garlic Yoghurt
150g natural yoghurt (it doesn’t have to be thick set as it will be poured over)
1 tsp finely grated garlic
Pinch of salt to taste
 
For the Chilli Butter
2 tbsp olive oil
50g butter
1 tsp pul biber
1 tsp sweet Turkish red pepper paste
½ tsp dried mint

Method

· Firstly, dissolve the stock cube in the 300ml of boiling water and leave to one side.

· Blitz the onions in the food processor, and drain in a sieve so that any excess water drips out and then add the finely chopped onion to a large bowl. Blitz the parsley in the food processor and add to the bowl. Blitz the chicken in the food processor until it’s texture is almost that of minced meat. Add to the bowl with the rest of the filling ingredients and mix everything together well with clean hands. Leave to one side and wash hands thoroughly.

· Preheat oven to 180C fan / 200C conventional.

· Fold the large yufka sheets in half and cut across so that you are left with 6 semi-circles. Take 1 sheet and cover the rest with tea-towels to prevent them from drying out.

*For the next part of the method, you can choose to use a large-nozzled piping bag, or your hands, but the latter can get a little messy, so have a bowl of warm water near by and keep washing your hands, especially if using chicken. Stay safe.

· Lay 1/5 of the chicken mixture all along the straight edge of one of the semi-circle sheets of yufka. You can watch my method here. Tuck in the sides, then roll all the way down until you have one long pastry filled sausage. Repeat with the remaining 4/5 of mixture and 4 sheets of pastry (*You can freeze the final semi-circle of pastry)

· Line all the pastry rolls together horizontally and cut through all 5 rolls at roughly 6cm intervals.

     Now, choose a dish that will fit all of the borek pieces in nice and snugly. I use an oval casserole dish, 26cm x 19cm. Line it with an oversized piece of greaseproof parchment paper that hangs over the edges of the dish, as you will use the paper to lift the mantı out of the dish once cooked. Brush the parchment paper with olive oil, then line up all the borek pieces in horizontally.

· Melt the 30g of butter and brush the tops of the pastry with it. Place the dish on the bottom rack of the oven for 30-35 mins until the tops of the pastry are lightly golden.

· While the börek are in the oven, prepare the other elements of the dish.
 
For the Garlic Yoghurt

· In a small bowl, mix together the grated garlic and yoghurt, and a pinch of salt to taste, and pop in the fridge.
 
For the stock

· Place a frying pan on a medium heat and add the oil and butter. Once the butter has melted, stir in the red pepper paste, then add the pre-prepared stock from earlier. Turn up the heat so that the mixture starts to bubble vigorously, then turn down a little and allow it to reduce and thicken by about a ¼.

· Once the börek has been in the oven for 30-35 mins, carefully take out the dish and pour the stock mixture all over the tops of the crispy pastry. Pop back in the oven, this time on the middle rack for another 15-20 minutes.

· When the tops of the börek have crisped up again but are now a nice juicy red colour, take the dish out of the oven and leave somewhere safe. Get a flat serving dish ready for you to lift the börek out onto.

For the Chilli Butter

· Once you have taken the börek out of the oven, prepare the chilli butter. You can use the same frying pan that you used for the stock (give it a little wash / wipe down first). Add the oil and butter to the pan and stir in the red pepper paste. Add the butter, and once melted and frothy, stir in the pul biber and mint, then take off the heat.

· Carefully lift the börek out of the dish with the parchment paper (the small pieces of börek will have conjoined in the dish whilst cooking snugly, and with the addition of the stock, to create one large börek) and onto the serving dish, gently sliding it off of the paper. Liberally drizzle the garlic yoghurt on top of the yufka mantısı, followed by the chilli butter, and finish of with a sprinkling of summak, pul bibber and finely chopped flat leaf parsley.