Spinach & Feta Gözleme

Gözleme is one of Turkey's most democratic dishes — found everywhere from roadside stalls to restaurant menus, made at home and sold at every village market. The word derives from "göz", meaning "eye", referring to the air pockets that form when thin yufka dough is placed on a hot iron griddle (sac). Traditionally, it was women who made gözleme at the village bazaar, rolling the dough by hand with a long rolling pin called "oklava" and folding the fillings in with practiced speed.

The sac (concave or convex iron griddle) over which gözleme is cooked is one of the oldest cooking implements in Anatolian history, predating the Ottoman Empire by thousands of years. The combination of thin unleavened dough, simple filling, and direct heat is a formula that has not needed to change. What has changed is the range of fillings — spinach and feta, the most popular version, reflects the Aegean and Thracian regions where both ingredients grow in abundance.

Our gözleme is cooked to order, filled with spinach and feta, and served with a lemon slice, haydari (garlic yoghurt dip), and a pickled green pepper — the classic accompaniments that cut through the richness of the cheese and let the thin, crispy dough speak for itself.