Name: Katmer review by Yehanoha at Emek Kadayıf Künefe (ERYAMAN), Etimesgut/Ankara, Türkiye
Item: Katmer
Rating: 3.1
Author: Yehanoha

A sheet of dough stretched until it is transparent, scattered with kaymak and crushed green pistachios, folded into a square and cooked on a hot stone or sac until the layers blister and the butter inside turns to syrup: katmer is the breakfast pastry of Gaziantep, eaten hot at seven in the morning in the specialist katmerci shops near the old market, and the thing a bride's family traditionally sends to the groom's house the morning after a wedding. The word means layered, and the plain version, with butter and sugar only, is a village food across Anatolia; the Antep katmer, with its clotted cream and the city's pistachios, is the one that has travelled. It belongs to the same family of thin-dough pastries as gözleme and the Balkan burek, but it is sweet, fatty and eaten in minutes.

The dough is flour, water, salt and a little oil, kneaded soft, rested, then opened on an oiled marble by hand, pulled from the edges and swung until it is a sheet a metre across and thin enough to read through; this is the skill, and the katmerci does it in under a minute. The sheet is dotted with pieces of kaymak, the thick clotted cream of water buffalo milk, sprinkled with sugar and a generous layer of coarsely ground pistachio, then the edges are folded in to make a square parcel the size of a dinner plate. It goes onto a sac or a stone oven floor brushed with clarified butter and cooks for a few minutes a side until the surface is golden and crisp in patches, with the filling melted inside. It is cut into squares with a knife or scissors and served at once, usually with a dusting of more pistachio and a glass of tea.

Judge the dough first, because it is the hard part: the layers should be visibly thin and separate, crisp on the outside and soft within, with no thick doughy folds and no raw patches at the seams. The filling should be hot and molten, the kaymak turned to a rich sauce that soaks the inside, the sugar dissolved, and the pistachio fresh, green and present as texture and flavour, not a dusting of pale, stale nut. Mark down a katmer that is greasy on the plate, which means too much butter on the sac; one that is dry and cracker-like with the filling separate; margarine in place of butter or cream; a reheated square, which goes leathery; and any version sold with ice cream, chocolate or walnuts under this name outside a tourist menu. It should be eaten within five minutes of leaving the sac, and a good katmerci will not let it leave the shop.

Katmer

Türkiye

Emek Kadayıf Künefe (ERYAMAN)

Yeterince çıtır değildi, içi de dışı da yumuşaktı. Lezzet olarak fıstıklı görünmesine rağmen tat çok gelmiyordu.

Katmer review by Yehanoha at Emek Kadayıf Künefe (ERYAMAN), Etimesgut/Ankara, Türkiye

Katmer

Emek Kadayıf Künefe (ERYAMAN)

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