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Güllaç

Nothing is cooked — the starch sheets soften in warm sweetened milk in the dish they are served from.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (whole milk).

Ingredients

to finish

Method

  1. NOTHING IS COOKED. The sheets are not boiled, not baked, not fried. Milk is warmed with sugar until it is hot to a fingertip and no more, and the dry starch sheets are laid into the dish one at a time with a ladle of that milk over each, and left to soften. The whole dessert is assembled cold-to-warm and then chilled. This is the most unusual thing about it and the easiest to get wrong, because every instinct says a layered milk-and-pastry dish goes in the oven. It does not, and in the oven the sheets dissolve entirely.
  2. THE MILK IS WARM, NOT HOT, AND CERTAINLY NOT BOILING. Heated with the sugar until the sugar dissolves and the milk is hot to a fingertip -- around 50 or 60°C -- then taken off. Güllaç sheets are mostly starch and they dissolve into mush in hot milk within a minute. Warm milk softens them to a silky, pliable layer that stays a layer.
  3. EACH SHEET IS LADLED AS IT GOES IN, NOT SOAKED AFTERWARDS. A sheet laid in the dish, a ladle of milk poured over it and spread with the back of the ladle, then the next sheet. Stacking all ten dry and pouring the milk over the top leaves the bottom sheets dry and the top ones dissolved.
  4. THE WALNUTS GO IN THE MIDDLE ONLY, AROUND THE FIFTH SHEET. Not between every layer. Five sheets, then all the walnuts spread evenly, then the remaining five. Nuts between every layer stop the sheets softening into one another and the dessert does not hold together when cut.
  5. THE SHEETS ARE FOLDED TO FIT AND NOT CUT. Güllaç sheets are large and round and the dish is usually square; the edges are folded in rather than trimmed. Cut, the trimmings are wasted and the folded edges are part of what gives the dessert body.
  6. THE ROSE WATER GOES IN AT THE END AND IS THREE TABLESPOONS. Stirred into the last of the milk, which is poured over the top layer. It is a defining flavour here rather than a hint -- the name itself is built on the rose -- so the quantity is larger than it would be anywhere else.
  7. IT IS CHILLED FOUR HOURS AND MUST HAVE NO LOOSE MILK LEFT. The sheets go on absorbing. If there is milk standing in the dish after four hours, there was too much -- it should all have gone into the layers.
  8. The milk and sugar warmed, stirring, only until the sugar dissolves and the milk is HOT TO A FINGERTIP, around 50 to 60°C. NOT boiled. Taken off the heat.
  9. ONE sheet laid in a wide dish, edges FOLDED in to fit.
  10. A ladle of the warm milk poured over and spread with the back of the ladle.
  11. Repeated for FIVE sheets.
  12. ALL the walnuts spread evenly over the fifth sheet.
  13. The remaining FIVE sheets layered on the same way, one ladle of milk each.
  14. The rose water stirred into the last of the milk and poured over the top.
  15. Left 30 MINUTES at room temperature, then chilled 4 HOURS.
  16. TESTED: there should be NO loose milk standing in the dish, and the layers should be silky and distinguishable -- not dissolved into one mass. Mush means the milk was too hot.
  17. Cut into squares and scattered with pistachios and pomegranate.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes