Sweet
Kadaif
Shredded pastry baked with walnuts and steeped in lemon syrup, made across the Balkans for feast days.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 1 hr
- Cook
- 45 min
- Total
- 1 hr 45 min
- Fasting
- Not suitable
Ingredients 9 ingredients
Method
- Make the syrup first, because it has to be cold when it meets the pastry. Boil the sugar and water with three slices of lemon and the juice of the rest, simmer for ten minutes, then leave it to cool completely.
- Heat the oven to 180C. Pull the kadaif apart on a board with your fingers until no compacted clumps are left; anything still matted stays raw in the middle.
- Put the strands in a large bowl, pour over the melted butter and rub it through with both hands until every strand is coated and the pile feels dry rather than greasy.
- Mix the walnuts, cinnamon, raisins and two tablespoons of the cooled syrup into a damp crumb.
- Press half the buttered kadaif into a buttered tin in an even layer. Spread the walnut mixture over it to the edges, then cover with the remaining kadaif and press it down gently.
- Cut the tray into diamonds or squares before it goes in, then bake for forty to forty-five minutes, until the top is an even deep gold.
- Pour the cold syrup over the hot kadaif, slowly and all over, then leave it uncovered for at least four hours, and overnight if you can, so it drinks the syrup and settles.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Kadaif pastry
- Sold as kataifi in Greek and Turkish shops and in the freezer of most Middle Eastern grocers. Thaw it in its wrapper or it dries out.
- Kajmak, to serve
- Clotted cream beaten with a little mascarpone, or thick sheep's yoghurt.
