Turkey

Edirne

Small cubes of lamb liver threaded on a skewer with pieces of tail fat between them, grilled over charcoal for a few minutes until the outside catches and the centre is just pink, and served on lavash with onion, sumac, parsley and grilled peppers: ciğer kebabı is the breakfast of Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır and the dish that separates kebab cities from kebab restaurants. In Urfa the liver shops open before six in the morning and the skewers are cooked to order over narrow charcoal troughs, eaten standing with a glass of tea; in Edirne the liver is sliced thin and fried instead, as tava ciğer, which is a different dish. Adana and Gaziantep have their own versions, and across the country ciğer şiş appears as a cheap, quick kebab order. It is about speed and freshness, because liver cooked a minute too long is ruined, and liver that is a day old tastes of it.

The liver must be fresh, from a young lamb, dark red and firm, trimmed of its membrane and the larger vessels, and cut into cubes of about two centimetres. It is salted lightly, sometimes rubbed with a little pul biber, and threaded onto thin skewers alternating with cubes of kuyruk yağı, the tail fat, which renders over the coals and bastes the liver; a skewer with no fat is a skewer that will dry out. The charcoal is hot and close, and the skewers are turned constantly for three to five minutes, no more, until the surface is browned and blistered in places and the inside is still slightly pink. The cook strips the skewer onto a piece of lavash that has been held over the coals, folds in sliced onion with sumac and parsley, sometimes a charred green pepper and a tomato, and hands it over. In Urfa the accompaniment is a plate of raw onion and a hot, thin isot pepper paste.

Judge the cooking first: the liver should be soft and slightly pink inside with a browned surface, tender enough to bite cleanly, with no grey, grainy or chalky texture, which means it was overcooked by as little as a minute. The fat pieces should be rendered and crisp at the edges, and the liver should taste clean and faintly sweet, not bitter or metallic, which points to old liver or a liver that was not trimmed. Mark down dry liver, liver cooked without tail fat, a skewer that has sat in a warming tray, a smell of ammonia, and lavash that is cold or dry. The onion should be fresh and sharp and the sumac generous. A portion is two or three skewers in Urfa; eating six is normal. It should be eaten within a minute of leaving the fire.

Ciğer kebabı

Türkiye

Aydın Tava Ciğer

Edirnenin meşhur ciğer tavasını burda denedim. Zaten en bilinen restoranı burasıymış. Ciğeri baya beğendim. Farklı bi yapılış tarzı var. Tavada kızartılarak yapılıyor ve baya lezzetli. Yumuşaktı tadı da güzeldi. Masaya gelen biber domates soğan çok basit kalmış orda çeşitleri çoğaltabilirler. Yine gidersem kesin yerim

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

TatveTat

Bu tatlı sanki bu dükkana ait değilmiş gibi bir tatlı yani butik bi tatlıcı olduğu için katmer pek doğru bir seçim değildi. İçinde fıstık az, kaymak çok.

Hayrabolu tatlısı

Klasik kemal paşa tatlısı gibi bişey sunumu güzel, sütle servis edilmesi de iyi. Çok yoğun bi şeker tadı yok yani denenebilir bi tatlı

Rank	Place	Top dish	Reviews	Score
1	Aydın Tava Ciğer Sabuni, Tahmis Çarşısı Sk. No:8, 22000 Edirne Merkez/Edirne, Türkiye Top dish: Liver Kebab	Liver Kebab	1	8.061 review
2	TatveTat Sabuni, Tahmis Çarşısı Sk. No :9, 22100 Edirne Merkez/Edirne, Türkiye Top dish: Hayrabolu tatlısı	Hayrabolu tatlısı	2	6.652 reviews

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