Sigara Böregi

Sigara Böregi is a turkish snack made of a pastry called Yufka, which is traditional filled with a special kind of feta cheese, paprika powder, dill or parsley or both. I created a vegan version with a tofu based filling and I like it even more, than I liked the non vegan version.



Sigara Böregi


Ingredients:

24 leaves of pizza-slice shaped yufka pastry (this might be hard to get, if you can't find a turkish grocery store, but you can also use phyllo-pastry which is quiet similar to yufka)

1 block of firm tofu, pressed

3 tsp of salt

1 hand of dill, finely chopped

3 tbs of paprika powder

1/3 cup of tahina

5 small cubes of fermented tofu

1 tsp of garilc powder

1/2 of nutritional yeast

some canola oil for deepfrying



1. In a bowl, mash the fresh and the fermented tofu with a fork.

2. Add all the other ingredients eccept the yufka and oil and mix well.

3. Place aprox. 2 teaspoons of filling on top of a yufka leave.

4. This is called CIGAR-böregi so you will need you cigarette rolling skills now. Try to roll the yufka around the filling like you would roll a cigarrette. If you want the version shown at a first picture or if you just have phyllo, than you roll it like you whould do with a springroll.

5. Deepfry inside of a pan with a lot of canolaoil until crisp.

Spinach Lasagna

This is my standrt recipe for spinach lasagna.

Spinach Lasagna

Ingredients:

1/2 package dried vegan lasagna pastry (250g) green or plain

a hand full of freozen spinach (defrosted)

for the tvp sauce:

2 onions

1 carrot

2 cloves of garlic

1 hand full of tvp (the kind that looks like ground meat, also called "soya mince" at my local indian grocery store)

3 tbs olive oil

about 6 tbs of tomatopaste

2 cans of chopped tomatoes

a dash of red wine or some water

some basil

salt and pepper for seasoning


for the bechamel sauce:

125 g of magarine or 3/4 cup of canola oil

3/4 cup of nutritional yeast

2 tsp mustard or mustard powder

1/2 cup flour

1/2 litres of soymilk

a pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper for seasoning


1. Soke the TVP in boiling water for aprox. 5 minutes.

2. Heat a non-stick-pan with the oilive oil an sweat the finely chopped onion, garilc and carrots.

3. Drain the TVP and try to press out as much moisture as you can.

4. Ad the TVp to the pan and roast intil it gets golden brown.

5. At the tomatopaste and fry it for 30 seconds.

6. First at a the wine and allow the alcohol to evaporate then ad the canned tomatoes.

7. Simmer on low heat for 10-20 minutes and ad the basil. Season with salt an pepper.

8. Heat the magarine or oil in a smal pot.

9. Stir in the mustard and the nurtional yeast.

10. Carefully ad the flour until everything looks like a firm dough.

11. Quikly stir in the soymilk.

12. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper and allow it to thicken on low heat, until the sauce has the cosistency of pancake batter, while doing this stir frequently to prevent the sauce from burning at the bottom of the pot.

13. Now start to put one layer of tvp sauce and bechamel sauce at the bottom of a casserol dish. The next step ist one layer of lasagna layer, then one layer of tvp, bechamel and spinach. Repeat until your casserol dish is nearly full. Top with one layer of pastry and the rest of the bechamel sauce.

14. Bake the lasagna at 200 °C until the surface has a nice golden brown colour.