Zohar Rokman's A New Israeli Bourekas Recipe

A super-crunchy bourekas made from croissant dough, with a savory filling.

In Israel these pastries are called “snails”, “Turkish bourekas” Or “boyoz”. This pastry made of paper-thin dough, rolled around a filling and then twisted into a spiral. Some fill it with cheese, others with eggplants, but the most popular and beloved version is with spinach, like in this delicious recipe.

What is your favorite bourekas? Most Israeli children are likely to answer: pizza. The Turks would not necessarily approve of the Israeli pizza-flavored filling, but Israelis know what they like, and the pizza bourekas has become a local icon. As a hybrid created in the 1980s, it combines the best of everything — pizza tomato sauce, melting cheese, and sometimes green olives.

This dish is not simple to make, yet the resulting pastry, crunchy on the outside and rich in fluffy layers on the inside, is well worth the effort