Homemade Kataifi Recipe

Golden, crispy and amazingly moist! Kataifi is a delicious dessert which like baklava is very popular among Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern nations. An amazing dessert made with roughly chopped walnuts (and sometimes other nuts), scented with ground clove and cinnamon, wrapped into buttered cripsy kataifi dough and bathed in lemon scented syrup.. Simply amazing! This is a very easy to follow Kataifi recipe for you to recreate this traditional sweet delight from scratch.

Ingredients

450g kataifi dough (16 oz.)
250g walnuts, roughly chopped (9 oz.)
1 tsp ground cinammon
a pinch ground clove
250g butter from cow’s milk (9 oz.)

For the syrup

450g sugar (16 0z.)
330g water (12 oz.)
peel of 1 lemon
1 cinnamon stick

Instructions

To make this Kataifi recipe, start by preparing the syrup. Add all the ingredients for the syrup into a small pot and bring to the boil. As soon as the sugar has dissolved, the syrup is ready. Leave the syrup aside to cool completely.

Prepare the filling for the Kataifi. In a blender add the walnuts, ground clove and cinnamon; pulse until the walnuts are roughly chopped (not powdered). Although the walnut filling is the most common, lots of kataifi recipes also add pistachios and almonds. So it’s up to you to decide.
Melt the butter and with a cooking brush butter the bottom and sides of a baking pan. (approx. 26-28cm diameter)

Unroll the Kataifi dough from the plastic sleeve. Work the kataifi dough with your hands, tearing apart the shreds and gently spreading the strands out a bit if they clump together, in order to get fluffy. Cover the Kataifi dough with a slightly damp towel.

Take one piece of the kataifi dough, and spread it on a working surface or on your palm. Drizzle with melted butter and place 1 teaspoon of the filling at one end. Roll it up tightly, folding inwards the sides, to form a small cylinder. Place the kataifi roll in the pan and brush with melted butter, using the cooking brush to shape it a little bit. Repeat with the rest of the kataifi dough and filling. Place the kataifi rolls the one next to the other, leaving no gaps between them and drizzle with a little bit more butter.

Bake the kataifi in preheated oven at 170-180C for about 1 hour (on the middle rack), until nicely coloured and crispy.

As soon as you turn the kataifi out of the oven, ladle slowly the 3/4 of the cold syrup over the for kataifi, enabling each ladle to be absorbed. Cover the pan with a towel and set aside for 10 minutes. Ladle the rest of the syrup over the kataifi and wait until absorbed.

Serve this delicious kataifi dessert with a full spoon of vanilla ice-cream. Enjoy!

Source: My Greek Dish