Barak Sagi’s recipes come straight from the source, and I’ll describe the dough-making separately. As for the filling, here’s what Barak explained for anyone who missed it: if there’s no wild beet or sorrel, or simply if you want to try something different, you can use other leaves as well. Most store-bought versions rely on spinach, sometimes on mangold. Among foraged greens, I’ve heard of mustard, Chenopodium, even Stellaria — and surely many others could work.
In Arabic cooking, za’atar (the real wild kind) is sometimes added, though never on its own. I’ve most often tasted these pastries as fatayer, usually with Circassian cheese folded inside.
What truly matters is the slow cooking of the filling. It needs time to shed all its moisture until it becomes thick, soft, almost paste-like — the texture that holds the pastry together from the inside.
A walk through the fields with Mr. Barak Sagi in Kfar Yehoshua turns into a quiet masterclass in wild gathering. Our first stop was Iris Ben-Zvi’s organic farm, where the soil itself feels like a guide. Sorrel, Galium aparine, Lamium amplexicaule, wild beet, green arum, Chenopodium murale, and bright, lemony Oxalis — each plant adding its own note to the early-season palette, and all of them reminding how alive the landscape becomes when you know where to look.
