Katmer

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.