Shelpek

Ingredients

• Flour500 g
• Kefir300 ml
• Egg1
• Sugar1 tbsp
• Bicarbonate of soda½ tsp
• Butter — melted50 g
• Oil for frying500 ml
• Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Mix the kefir with the bicarbonate and leave it five minutes; the mixture foams.

   7 min

2. 2

   Add the egg, sugar, salt and melted butter and stir until even.

   5 min

3. 3

   Work in the flour a little at a time and knead a soft dough that stays slightly tacky.

   12 min

4. 4

   Cover it with a cloth and rest it half an hour at room temperature.

   32 min

5. 5

   Divide it into seven balls and roll each into a thin twenty-centimetre round.

   15 min

6. 6

   Prick each round in several places with a fork so it does not balloon in one bubble.

   5 min

7. 7

   Fry them in hot oil a minute a side, to golden spots, and drain them on paper.

   18 min

About the dish

Shelpek are made seven at a time — a ritual number tied to remembering the dead. The smell of the frying dough, by belief, reaches those who have gone.

The dough is made on soured milk or kefir rather than water. The acid keeps the bread soft and stops it stiffening as it cools.

They are rolled very thin, until translucent. A thick round will not puff in the oil and stays a dense pancake rather than an airy shelpek.

Worth knowing

• — The oil must not be too hot. At 190 °C a round darkens within twenty seconds and stays raw inside.
• — Stack the finished shelpek under a cloth. In the open air they stiffen within ten minutes.
• — They are served with tea, honey or kaymak. A sweet serving is usual, though the dough itself is barely sweet.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

380 kcal

Protein

8 g

Fat

18 g

Carbs

48 g

More from Kazakhstan

• Beshbarmak — Boiled meat on sheets of pasta with an onion broth called sorpa. The centrepiece of a Kazakh table.
• Baursak — Squares of yeast dough deep-fried into hollow puffs. The bread of the tea table and of every feast.
• Kuyrdak — Offal and meat fried in a cauldron with onion and potato on rendered tail fat.