Spiced beef, salty cheese fill Turkey’s top street food

Outside the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, a woman in a headscarf slaps a ball of dough between her hands and stretches it over the dome of a large saç griddle.

She sprinkles half of the paper-thin dough with chewy white cheese, a tangle of bitter greens and a crumble of spiced beef. By the time she folds it shut with a long wooden dowel, the flatbread is already bubbly and browned.

This is gozleme, one of Turkey’s most common street foods. It’s easy enough to replicate at home with a few substitutions.

For this recipe in our book “COOKish,” which limits recipes to six ingredients without sacrificing flavor, we use items easily found in a U.S. supermarket. Spinach instead of the bitter greens, flour tortillas and feta cheese, which has a similar saltiness to the Turkish one, made a faithfully tasty stuffed flatbread.

To quickly build flavor, we cooked the beef with tomato paste and cumin before adding the spinach.

Beef, Spinach and Feta Gozleme

Start to finish: 40 minutes. Servings: 4

1 pound 90% lean ground beef

3 tablespoons tomato paste

2½ teaspoons ground cumin

Kosher salt and ground black pepper

5-ounce container baby spinach, roughly chopped

4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (¾ cup)

Four 10-inch flour tortillas

2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

In a nonstick 12-inch skillet, cook the beef, tomato paste, cumin, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper and ½ cup water, until the beef is no longer pink. Add the spinach and cook, stirring, until the pan is dry. Transfer to a bowl; cool for 10 minutes, then stir in the feta. Wipe out the skillet. Divide the mixture among the tortillas, spreading it over the center third; fold each like a business letter. In the skillet, heat 1 teaspoon of the oil until shimmering. Add 2 tortillas and cook until golden on both sides, then transfer to plates. Repeat with the remaining oil and tortillas.