A kataifi template or two

"a bit like shredded wheat, only 10 times tastier" Yotam Ottolenghi

Today's Guardian Feast newsletter featured this Kataifi pie with feta. tomatoes and warm oregano honey from Alice Zaslavsky. I was a bit taken by it, thinking that this might be the next thing I will make for a vegetarian. I mean it looks wonderful, has all the trendy things like the drizzled honey thing, pistachios and feta and all things I like inside - tomatoes, cheese, onions. And no chilli. But seeing as how I'm treating this as a kind of template today - the filling could indeed be anything. And the drizzle.

Templates - so many recipes these days come with suggestions for how you can vary what they are presenting - this fruit for that fruit; this dairy product for that one; this vegetable for that one; nuts, spices, herbs ... Why one wonders did they not do that back in the times of Elizabeth, Robert, Julia and Jane? One had the impression that the way the recipe told you to do it was the only way. It actually never occurred to me that there could be any other way. Although of course all the home cooking that I observed both at home and in France, should have told me that you can change anything, or just make it up as you go along.

So what is kataifi? Well as Ottolenghi says - it looks a bit like shredded wheat - or very fine vermicelli but it's not really a pastry in the usual sense but:

"kataifi begins as a light, pourable batter which is streamed through fine nozzles on to a rotating heated plate, where it cooks almost instantly into a cascade of fine vermicelli-like strands, delicate yet strong, like spun silk." Alice Zaslavsky

Of course, since this is all about kadaifi - or kataifi you first need to source your kadaifi. Which is not an easy task, and when the Dubai chocolate craze was running hot and everyone was making it at home (not me) because they couldn't buy it in the shops, the kadaifi supply completely ran out. The Antoniou company which makes most of it in Australia simply couldn't keep up with demand. That particular crisis is over, but the supermarkets still don't stock it, so you will either have to buy it online or find a Middle-Eastern supermarket. Me - I'm lucky for now - because the small supermarket next to Aldi stocks it. I'm not sure how long they can survive in such close proximity to the three heavyweight supermarkets - so maybe we should start petitioning Coles and Woolworths to stock it now. And Antoniou to make more so that the supermarkets won't run out and cancel their order.

They will all tell you, however, that if you can't find any, do as Noor Murad says:

"If you can’t find kataifi in Turkish or Middle Eastern supermarkets, you can thinly shred some filo sheets to create the same effect."

So here is a closer look at Alice's recipe. Fundamentally the template tells you to soak your kataifi pastry in butter, line a springform tin with it, fill with your filling - in this case feta, yoghurt, eggs, tomatoes, garlic, oregano and onions plus a pinch of nutmeg and salt and pepper. Then cover with the pastry hanging down the sides and some more that you have kept aside for the purpose. Oh and I forgot she actually crunched up some of the pastry and added it to the filling. When it's baked you drizzle with the honey ...

Alice tells us that it's a sort of a cross between a quiche and a pie, which means that the filling could really be anything. It's Friday quiche night tonight here in the Dearman household, and this week it will be fundamentally celery and bacon - and I'm still pondering on the 'always add' secret ingredients that will lift it to another level - mustard, pickles, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce ...? Or should I just add lemon? Which minor diversion is meant to point out that just as you can put anything in a quiche you can put anything in a kataifi pie.

And Ottolenghi and his crew did with this

Parmigiana pie with tomato sauce which I think was in one of the OTK books. He is not quite as adventurous as Alice however, as his pie just has a topping of kataifi. It's not the surrounding 'pastry' that holds it all together. In fact there is no pastry lining, just a spicy eggplant filling. It's become a bit of a minor classic copied by many.

It's a slightly different template in that the filling is not a custardy one, but more like a lasagne kind of filling with the eggplant standing in for pastry. And so it can be converted to other such fillings - spinach and ricotta, other vegetables such as pumpkin or sweet potato, or a creamy meat based filling. It's the crunchy topping that makes the difference.

And whilst we are on crunchy toppings - that crunchy topping can also be applied to sweet things like these two from Noor Murad - on the left Pistachio cake with labneh cream and kataifi topping and on the right Lemon and blueberry kataifi mess - for which, alas, there is no recipe online. I say alas, because I have actually made this one and it is easy and so delicious. You bake the sweetened kataifi for crumbling on top. The base is a sweetened yoghurt and cream mix, and on top of this you scatter blueberries and shop bought meringues and to finish pour over a lemon syrup and scatter the kataifi. Vary to your heart's content with different fruit and different syrups - even a different kind of base - mascarpone, cream cheese, custard - or maybe even more meringue ... But, trust me, the kataifi is a winner for the crunch - although I guess you could substitute something nutty or a praline. For the cake the kataifi is a crunchy topping with more pistachios. So I guess you could top any kind of cake with a similar thing.

Going back to Alice she also has a recipe for Fuzzy basil cheese sticks for which she wraps some hard mozarella in buttery kataifi on skewers and then deep fries them, topping with fried basil leaves. This is another fundamental kataifi technique whereby everything from prawns to apples is wrapped in the pastry and then usually baked, but sometimes fried.

Ottolenghi has a recipe for Aubergine kadaifi nests with red pepper and tomato salsa - his are stuffed with a creamy eggplant concoction and then baked. But interestingly I also found a version of the recipe on a CBS website, with appears to have made the nests, into mini tarts, filled them with the eggplant mix and with a more solid kind of topping than the salsa he describes. Which just goes to show you can take one template technique - a covered roll and convert it into a mini tart - which, of course could be appled to the other templates too.

Finally - just to demonstrate that simply by changing your filling to something sweet - you have dessert - here is Ravneet Gill's Baked apples with kadaif - a variation - on the above nests.

You can make baklava with kataifi too and there are many other classic Middle-Eastern deserts that use the stuff.

The only trick is to find the kataifi.

POSTSCRIPT

Skye Gygell, daughter of the late Bruce, who made an influential name for herself in England as a chef who prepared simple food, from the produce grown in her own kitchen gardens, died this week at the too early age of 62 from a rare kind of skin cancer.

I confess I have never read any of her books but have long been aware of the influence that she seemed to have had on so many other famous cooks. Her last restaurant venture was Spring in Somerset House in London.

Sad.

YEARS GONE BY

November 28

2024 - Poor shopping = dinner challenges

2023 - From murgh ka soola to chicken tikka

2022 - More of a concept than a recipe - sort of what today's post is about

2021 - Hors d'œuvre variés - a first recipe

2020 - Missing

2019 - Nothing

2018 - 'Simple' 1 - short on time

2017 - Target reached - so?

2016 - Comfort food and comfort