Spinach fatayer

Leavened dough is rolled thin and cut into discs. Onto each disc goes raw spinach that has been salted and squeezed dry, with onion, sumac, pomegranate molasses and sometimes pine nuts. Three sides are then lifted and joined at the top, and the pastry comes out closed and triangular. Bakeries in Aleppo and Damascus bake it on the same tray as manakish, though it is a different thing — this one is sealed, that one is open.

What goes inside

The spinach goes in raw, never boiled. Squeezing the water out is the step that matters: skip it and the dough opens and the pastry falls apart at the base. The sourness comes from sumac and pomegranate molasses rather than lemon, which is why it reads deep instead of sharp. There are cheese and meat versions, but spinach is what the bakeries are known for.

How it differs from manakish and sfiha

All three come out of the same oven and get mixed up constantly. Manakish is open dough spread with za’atar or cheese. Sfiha is open too and topped with meat; this site carries it under the name of the Aleppo lahmacun. Fatayer is closed, and the spinach version has no meat in it at all — no stock and no animal fat either.

When it is eaten

Straight from the oven it is breakfast or a midday snack; once it cools the dough stiffens, which is why people buy it in the morning. During Christian fasting it counts as fasting food. It also appears by the tray at funerals and memorial gatherings, being one of the few things easy to hand around a crowd.

How it reached South America

The same pastry changed continents with migration. In Argentina it is sold as empanada árabe and in Brazil as esfiha fechada; the dough and the opening changed, the triangular seal did not. What you pick up outside a bakery in Aleppo has a name in São Paulo.