Now let’s cook
Kattama. It is torn apart by hand, and that is when you see how many layers fit into one flatbread. Unleavened dough, butter, spring onion and a hot pan.
Ingredients
- 1 egglarge hen’s egg, about 50 g without the shell
- ½ tsp fine saltordinary table salt
- 250 ml waterplain drinking water
- 500 g plain wheat flourwhite wheat flour, called all-purpose in the US
- 180 g buttermade from cow’s milk
- 60 g spring onionalso called scallions: white part and green tops (a medium one weighs about 15 g)
- 150 ml sunflower oila neutral-tasting oil
Method
Crack the egg into a deep bowl, add the salt and 250 ml of room-temperature water and whisk with a fork until smooth.
Sift the flour. Tip half of it into the bowl and stir, then add the rest and knead by hand to a medium-soft dough. Do not taste the raw dough: it contains raw egg.
Knead the dough well, shape it into a ball, wrap it in cling film and leave it for 15–20 minutes.
Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces. Knead each one briefly, shape it into a ball and leave it under the film for another 5–6 minutes.
Melt the butter. Wash the spring onions and chop them finely.
Dust the work surface with flour and roll each piece into a round sheet 1–2 mm thick.
Brush one sheet with melted butter and scatter over half the spring onion. Lay the second sheet on top, brush it with butter too and scatter over the rest of the onion.
Cut the dough into strips 5 cm wide and roll each strip up. Stand each roll on a cut end and press it flat with your palm into a round. Put the rounds in a bag for 15 minutes.
Roll each round out with a rolling pin into a thin flatbread.
Heat a little vegetable oil in a frying pan: a spoonful for each flatbread, adding more as you go. Fry the kattama one at a time over a medium heat until golden brown on both sides and put them on a platter.
Where this dish comes from
Kattama is a layered bread of Kazakh cuisine, and it is part of Kyrgyz cooking too. Unleavened or yeasted dough is rolled out very thin, spread with butter, sour cream or rendered fat, rolled up tightly and rolled out again into a round. It is cooked in a hot pan, the taba, with a little oil. Kattama is served hot with tea and broken into pieces by hand, with kaymak (thick cream), honey or jam alongside.
