Gözleme: Turkish "Crêpes"

Gözleme (GURZ-leh-MEH), a village dish made of flat lavas (lah-VAHSH) bread folded over various ingredients then baked on a griddle, has been—like börek—a popular light meal for centuries in Turkey.

The rage for "authentic Turkish cuisine" has now brought it to the cities, where several restaurants specialize in making it.

In most, a cook sits at a low table in full view of diners, rolling out the dough with a broomstick-handle-thin rolling pin, then spreads the nearly one-meter-diameter rounds of paper-thin dough on a circular griddle to bake.

If left to bake alone, the dough becomes lavas.

For gözleme, ingredients are spread atop the bread and it is folded over them.

You can order gözleme:

ispanakli = with spinach
karisik = with everything
kasar peynirli = with yellow cow's milk cheese
katmer = plain
kiymali = with ground lamb
patatesli = with mashed potatoes
peynirli = with white sheep's milk cheese (feta)

A good place for gözleme is wherever you see women making it which, these days, may include such Istanbul restaurants as Hala.

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A cook spreads paper-thin dough on the griddle to bake into lavas bread or, with filling, gözleme.