Once in a while, life gives you a second chance, a delicious second chance.
Three years ago at the Anatolian Festival in Costa Mesa, I tasted a pastry called katmer. It's a specialty of a place called Gaziantep in Turkey. I had never heard of katmer or of Gaziantep, so this was a brand new experience.
My friend Faye Levy, an expert in Middle Eastern cuisine who was speaking at the festival, insisted I try it. This was because a katmer expert, Mehmet Özsimitci, had come all the way from Gaziantep to prepare it.
I watched as Özsimitci (above) rolled dough very thin, topped it with kaymak (thick clotted cream), sugar and pistachios, folded the dough into a square and brushed it lightly with clarified butter before baking it.
We each had a tiny sample, reveling in the creamy goodness and the pleasant, sweet nuttiness of the pistachios--Gaziantep is the pistachio capital of Turkey.
We came back later for another taste, but the katmer was gone and there would be no more that day. So sad, because this was my only chance to taste it.
Wrong. This spring I wound up in Gaziantep at the very shop that had provided katmer for the Anatolian Festival. Its name is Katmerci Zekeriya Usta (above).
And there was its owner, Mehmet Özsimitci (above), the man who had come to the festival.
Inside the shop, a young baker rolled, flipped and stretched the dough until it was paper thin (above).
Then he put on kaymak, pistachios and sugar and folded the dough over them. Now the katmer was ready for baking.
you can find videos of the shop on YouTube. And here is a link to a video of Özsimitci making katmer at the Anatolian Festival.
We sat at a table outside--Faye was there too--drinking tea and eating our fill of katmer. The large square was 17 lira, which is about $5.80, and enough for four.
Other shops in Gaziantep sell katmer, but I insisted on going to this one. That's so I could finally have a second taste of the very katmer that I had missed in Costa Mesa.
Photos by Barbara Hansen
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