In the most part of the the Balkans burek is a name for a dish of layered pastry filled with mincemeat or cheese.
Burek was brought to these parts by the Turkish soldiers during the Ottoman empire, and spread like wildfire, managing to become a loved dish for students, blue collar workers and others in need of a cheap yet filling meal, like budget travellers.
There are many ways to prepare burek, but we shall look upon the purist and the westernized techniques.
While the muslims prepare the burek exclusively as a meat dish of equal parts of lamb, beef, some chopped onions and greased with animal fat (not pork). It should be baked slowly in an oven of a furnace (turk. furuna).
Westernized variation (for example Croatian) includes similar pastry filled with cottage cheese mixed with eggs and sour cream, or even sweet version involving apples.
Traditionally burek is rolled in a tube, then closed in a spiral shape, but there are variations that layer the pastry in a round dish and then cut it into triangles.
In relation, it is then wrapped into paper, and sold, much like fish and chips in the UK or hot Broadway bagels in New York.