“Make burek, not war” is a common adage in Alida Malushi’s native Balkans. The phrase underscores the extent to which these golden coils of phyllo filled with cheese, meat, or vegetables are ingrained in the region’s history and way of life.
Burek’s unique position as a cultural touchstone prompted Malushi and her niece, Ariana Tolka, to found Balkan Bites in 2017. Burek was hard to find in the United States, and the pair thought, “how can we use this amazing food and share our cuisine and culture with people who aren’t from the Balkans’,” explains Tolka.
History of Burek
Ubiquitous in homes, bakeries, and restaurants across the Balkans, burek, also known as boureka and b¨orek, has a rich and varied history. Most likely originating with nomadic Turks before the seventh century, burek took numerous versions, shapes, and forms including cylindrical cigars, half-moons, and sharp triangles as it traveled all over central Asia, Europe, the Mediterranean, Maghreb, and the Middle East. The Balkan variation is a spiral shape; most versions are constructed of phyllo dough folded or twisted (the Turkic root, bur – means to twist) over many times to achieve a layered texture reminiscent of thick puffy bread.
So beloved was burek in ancient times that it was prized at court meals and the subject of poems. Some felt it even rivaled pilaf, revered in Turco-Iranian cuisine. Several Balkan proverbs suggest that a woman is eligible for marriage if she can make a good burek. Traditionally savory, burek is filled with a mixture of beef and onion, spinach and cheese, cheese, and potato and onion, though there are some sweet adaptations.
A Cultural Touchstone
Malushi and Tolka initially began baking burek and other traditional Albanian recipes together as a way to honor their mother and grandmother, Magbule, and so Tolka could learn the recipes to hand down one day. They wanted to share their creations with the Balkan community because “there was nothing like this that tastes so homemade available for purchase,” says Tolka. “It’s similar to an empanada or even a dumpling. People love those. We thought it was accessible and an easy entry point into our cuisine.”
Selling their handcrafted burek seemed a natural fit. Malushi had come to the United States in 1991 after the television station at which she worked was shut down by President Slobodan Milosevic’s military forces. She could not continue working as a journalist because her English was poor, so she turned to her love of cooking, studying pastry at the Institute of Culinary Education. She worked at restaurants and ran a French-style bakery in New Jersey for four years before closing it to care for her mother through a protracted illness.
Malushi’s appreciation of and passion for cooking were influenced by “the slow food way of life in Kosovo. Food was a part of life to be enjoyed,” she says. She learned by doing and nothing was rushed. Cooking provided calm and grounding during the war, even when working.
Tolka had traveled extensively, immersing herself in the gastronomy of the 54 countries she has visited so far. She realized she knew more about the food of other cultures than her own. She wanted to stay connected to her roots and use her microfinance and marketing backgrounds.
Building a Burek Business
The pair began casually selling to friends and other Balkans living nearby. There’s a huge community, says Tolka, in New York’s Bronx and Staten Island areas of war refugees who didn’t return to their home countries.
They progressed to selling at nearby pop-up markets, believing their enterprise had legs even beyond their community and wanting to change the perception of their beloved Balkans, which is mainly known in the United State for its war. “Even characters in movies that are from the Balkans are the villains,” comments Tolka, who hopes that by getting people to love burek, they’ll be a bit more open.
The “great response” they received to their easily portable, shareable pastry, says Tolka, validated their belief that burek transcends the borders of the Balkan community. Bigger markets followed and then COVID hit, scurrying plans to sell to restaurants and coffee shops and perhaps open a kiosk in a food hall.
The duo regrouped, created simple packaging and a label, and started selling directly to the consumer via their website and social media. Tolka drove all over New York delivering orders; they now ship around the country. Customers who are not of Balkan heritage were tired of cooking or curious about this new food. Some had visited and were familiar with burek.
Tolka says the pivot’s been successful because burek is easy to bake at home. “The smells and the aroma, it ends up tasting homemade, even though it is a frozen product.” Indeed, they do. Their bureks are flaky, savory, and have just the right ratio of cheese to the phyllo and other fillings.
The women use Magbule’s recipe, albeit with some tweaks, like adding more cheese to the spinach and cheese version. They use butter and extra virgin olive oil while Magbule used only extra virgin olive oil as she did not have access to butter often for years at a time.
Making burek is time-consuming because the dough has to be stretched before resting. One person can make 200 in two days. They sell six kinds, with occasional limited editions.
Sourcing the traditional feta and farmer cheeses has proved tricky. Cheese produced in the Balkans of course will taste different than cheese made in the United States based on what the animals are eating.
“A lot of trial and error and r&d was conducted that first year to determine which ingredients worked best and were good for an American palate,” recounts Tolka. Farmer and cottage cheeses and sour cream were tested. A common Balkan cheese, kashkaval, proved not soft enough and has a sharp taste, so they were unsure if the majority would enjoy it.
The duo ultimately settled on a “nice and tangy” Bulgarian feta made from native sheep’s milk and a whole milk ricotta cheese that is “creamy and a little sweet,” says Tolka. They do not use farmer cheese because the American version is drier than that produced in the Balkans and the burek need that moisture, she explains. And like many in the industry these days, they butt up against supply chain issues, sometimes substituting a cow’s milk feta.
Tolka and Malushi now plan to primarily sell the product frozen through their website and Fresh Direct beginning at the end of 2021. A couple of local stores are carrying their bureks; more in New York will be added in 2022. They are exploring selling their dough to restaurants and consumers and will continue to use occasional pop-ups to introduce the food.
Bureks that Nourish and Connect
There is a simple beauty in the women using burek, a food which has traveled all over, to connect people and share their roots and culture. “After the wars,” says Malushi, “despite attempts to nationalize cuisines, people are sharing their memories and family recipes, telling stories of how people once lived together and shared common life. Food connects them again because it is a part of their identity.” At the pop-ups, she adds, “it was beautiful to see people come together from the Balkan diaspora, from different countries that were previously at war, talking together, and bonding over their shared love of burek.”
“People are so grateful that they can have a food that their grandmother used to make that they never learned how to make or feel it’s too time-consuming to make themselves,” adds Tolka. She’s delighted by the chord that their burek has struck in customers, sharing one of many reaffirming emails they’ve received from purchasers: “It’s important for me to tell you that your bureks took me back in time. And there’s nothing sweeter than biting into something that brings back memories and tears.”