Ojaldre, the Ottoman-Sephardic savory pastry par excellence. © Janet Amateau.
OJALDRES (“ōō- ZHÄL-dres”) – A specialty in the Ottoman-Sephardic tradition and particularly in Rhodes, these are small, triangular-shaped, savory pastries of a few layers of phyllo dough filled either with cheese and potato or ground beef and fresh herbs. To make ojaldres is a labor of love and we generally reserve them for special occasions other than the major holidays, which have so many specific traditional foods associated with them.
Throughout the Mediterranean there are traditions of small savory pastries, made from a great variety of pastry forms and textures; the closest any of them comes to Sephardic ojaldres is Greek spanakopita, a spinach & feta cheese “pie” topped with multiple layers of crisp phyllo.
Hoja (oja in Ladino) and phyllo are the Spanish and Greek words, respectively, for leaf. As with the French mille feuilles (‘1,000 leaves,’ which in America is called a Napoleon), both describe the distinctive characteristics of the pastry dough itself.
In Spanish, hojaldre (“ō-HÄL-dre”) is the word for puff pastry in the French tradition. In modern parlance, however, you’ll also see the word applied to all variety of small sweet commericial cakes and cupcakes (think Hostess, Drake’s, Little Debbie).
