Chicken and Eggplant Gozlemes

Talking about Masterchef and interesting food cultures, I always remember this episode of Australian Masterchef showing Amina (a contestant) cooking gozelemes for Hobart market challenge. Watching how the judges enjoying her gozelemes makes me feel like I wanna try some too.

Ironically, we have not tasted any Turkish made gozleme before! All freshly cooked gozelemes seems to be "hot property" at all time and there is always long queues waiting to buy and taste these delicious-smelling pastries. We never have the time and patience to be part of these extremely long queues and that's why we never get to taste any Turkish made gozelemes even until today.

"Why not I cook gozleme for you?" My husband gave me an instant skeptical eye when I said this to him... I have never cook gozelemes before and don't have friends that can give me any cooking advices. I guess the best way for me to cook this is to test and try several recipes that I can find from my food magazines and internet.

Of all the recipes that I have found, I had tried two kinds of gozeleme pastry recipes, one contains yeast as its raising agent (from Taste.com) and the other one is the instant kind which uses self raising flour (from Australian GoodFood magazine, June 2012). The yeasted pastry is a wet and sticky dough which is quite difficult to knead and handle but the cooked pastry turned out to thin, crispy and amazing good! In contrast, the self-raising pastry is easy to prepare but difficult to roll out into thin layers and eventually turned out to be a doughy flop.

Using this gozeleme recipe, I have cooked my gozelemes with two kinds of fillings, the chicken or the beef versions. My husband and son were happy eating all gozelemes when they were freshly cooked from my kitchen and they like both the chicken and beef versions. After the meal had finished, I was laughing at my husband because he was still feeling skeptical with me cooking nice gozelemes. Nevertheless, I must admit that the credit should go to this gozeleme recipe because this is really a good one.
 

My Chicken and Eggplant Gozlemes

Cooking the chicken fillings

Two kinds of fillings that I cooked - chicken and beef

Making and cooking the gozlemes

The two different pastries that I have tried

Here is the recipe mostly adapted from Taste.com

(with my notes in blue in order to cook two different kinds of fillings)

Make 4 large gozelemes (serve 6)

Dough

1 1/4 cups warm water
7g sachet dried yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
2 3/4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil

Filling

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 small eggplant, cut into 1cm cubes
1/2 small brown onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
400g lean beef mince
(replaced with 200g lean beef mince and 200g chicken thigh mince, separated)
100g baby spinach
1 tsp dried chilli flakes 

(I didn't add this for my non-adult gozeleme consumer)
100g feta, crumbled
2 tsp lemon juice

Method

Combine warm water, yeast and sugar in a jug. Whisk to dissolve yeast. Stand in a warm place for 10 minutes or until frothy.

Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Add yeast mixture and 1 tbsp olive oil. Mix to form a soft dough. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 5 min or until elastic. Place in a lightly greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and stand in a warm place for 30 min or until dough doubles in size. (I have used breadmaker to knead the dough which is quite sticky to handle.)

Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add eggplant. Cook, stirring, for 6 to 7 min or until eggplant is tender. Drain on paper towel. Add onion and garlic to pan. Cook, stirring, for 3 min or until onion has softened (I removed half of the onion mixture). Add mince (chicken). Cook, stirring, for 6 to 8 min or until browned. Add (half amount of) spinach, chilli (I add this later) and (half amount of) reserved eggplant. Cook, stirring, for 2 min or until spinach has wilted and mince is cooked. Remove from heat. Stir through (half amount of) feta and lemon juice. Repeat the same step to cook the beef filling.

Divide dough into 4 equal portions. Roll 1 piece into a 32cm x 20cm rectangle. Place a quarter of the eggplant mixture over one half of rectangle. (I sprinkled some chili flakes onto the adult-consuming gozeleme at this stage) Brush opposite edge with water. Fold dough over to enclose filling. Press edges together to seal. Repeat with remaining dough and eggplant.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Brush one side of each gozleme with 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Cook for 3 min or until base is golden. Brush uncooked side using remaining oil. Turn over. Cook for 3 min or until golden and crisp. Transfer to a board. Cut each gozleme into 8 slices. Serve.

The gozeleme dough recipe that uses self raising flour has not worked well for me but it had worked very well for Guru Uru from Go Bake Yourself and so the recipe adapted from Australian GoodFood June 2012 is not provided in this post.

Happy Cooking
Please support me and like me at Facebook.