Beef Blahrek
Tonight was the night that I finally attempted beef burek, after talking about it for the past week or so. None of the recipes really looked like the thing that I saw on $40 a day that looked so tasty, so I improvised. I fried up a pound of lean hamburger with a diced onion and a little sliced shiitake mushroom (leftover, needed to use them up). I added salt and paprika but it still tasted very flat, so I threw in a splash of marsala and let it cook off. I layered this with phyllo dough, buttering each sheet lightly, and ricotta (dad doesn’t like feta). I baked it at 350 for 30 minutes, until the crust was golden brown. I served it with a little salad and some leftover green beans.
It wasn’t bad with the beans and salad, as the beans were rather too salty in the first place, but alone it was very blah. We experimented slightly with a horseradish sauce (dad’s idea) and a dilled yogurt sauce (my idea) but neither gave it the ooomph it needed. It wasn’t bad with ranch dressing on it, but everything is better with ranch.
It served its purpose, I’m not hungry anymore, but that definitely wasn’t a keeper recipe. Next time I’ll just grill out burgers, much tastier.
Tomorrow night’s dinner will be a tried and true favorite which I can assign dad to cook before I get home – cinci style chili. I’ve got all of the stuff that I like to dress it up with and it’ll be a simple dinner for a couple of nights, since this is looking like it might be another week filled with long days.
August 6th, 2006 at 12:33 am
I saw the episode of $40 a day too and wanted to make the burek! I read your take on it and to ensure it tasted like SOMETHING, I cooked the beef (and three or four pieces of bacon) with one of those taco meat packets you can get at the supermarket. I then just layered the dough with the meat and voila! It tasted like a mexican phyllo cassarole! pretty darn tasty!