Turkish mantı

Ingredients

• Flour500 g
• Eggs2
• Water180 ml
• Lamb — minced300 g
• Onion — grated1
• Thick yoghurt500 ml
• Garlic4 clove
• Butter100 g
• Paprika1 tbsp
• Dried mint1 tbsp
• Sumac1 tsp
• Salt and pepperto taste

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

   Knead a stiff dough from the flour, eggs, water and salt and work it fifteen minutes.

   18 min

2. 2

   Cover it and rest it forty minutes, or the dough springs back as you roll it.

   45 min

3. 3

   Mix the mince with the grated onion, salt and pepper and squeeze out the excess juice.

   8 min

4. 4

   Roll the dough a millimetre thick and cut it into two-centimetre squares.

   25 min

5. 5

   Put a knife-tip of filling on each square and pinch the four corners up into a knot.

   40 min

6. 6

   Boil the mantı in salted water for eight minutes and drain, keeping a ladle of the water.

   12 min

7. 7

   Whisk the yoghurt with the garlic, plate the mantı, spoon the yoghurt over and pour on the paprika and mint butter.

   10 min

About the dish

Kayseri mantı are made the size of a fingernail — forty to a spoon. Size is the measure of skill here, and the saying goes that a bride should fit forty mantı on one spoon.

Very little filling goes in, barely a knife-tip. The point of the dish is the dough and the sauce, and the meat is an accent rather than a filling.

The paprika butter is poured smoking and at the last moment. The paprika is stirred into butter off the heat: in a hot pan it turns bitter within seconds.

Worth knowing

• — Keep the dough under film throughout the shaping. Dried squares will not seal and split along the seams.
• — Let the yoghurt down with a spoon of the cooking water to the thickness of pouring cream. Thick yoghurt will not spread and leaves the mantı dry.
• — Mantı can be dried and kept a week, or frozen. Frozen ones boil two minutes longer, straight from the freezer.

Nutrition

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

Calories

640 kcal

Protein

28 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

62 g

More from Turkey

• Menemen — Eggs cooked into tomatoes and green pepper. They are never beaten and rarely stirred, or you end up with ordinary scrambled eggs.
• Mercimek çorbası — A red lentil soup blended smooth and finished with lemon and paprika butter.
• Lahmacun — A paper-thin flatbread with lamb and pepper paste, baked three minutes in a screaming oven.