The quintessential Kastellorizean sweet pastry.   Katoumari are made from the simplest of ingredients but the technique is what makes this such a delight to eat – crispy and flaky and delightfully spiced with cloves and sugar.

Ingredients:

• 1.3 kilos plain flour (extra for rolling)
• 1.3 kilos butter
• water
• cloves, freshly ground
• sugar

Method:

Place flour in a large bowl and add enough warm water to make a soft dough. Knead for at least 10 minutes then put aside until cool.  Divide into 4 portions.  Dust your surface liberally with flour and then roll out one of the pieces until it is paper thin.  Don’t worry if it tears a little at this stage.

Once you have rolled it as thinly as possible, you can pull and stretch the dough to make it even thinner.  If it sticks, or doesn’t roll out evenly, you will need to add more flour to the surface.

Brush with melted butter.  Make a hole in the centre (about the size of a 20 cent piece) and roll the dough back to make a large circle.

Make a break in the circle to form a long rope.

Then coil dough from each end until they meet.

Place one coil on top of the other.  Sprinkle with more flour.

Then roll out to the size of your frying pan.  Cooking can be done in a normal frying pan on top of the stove, but we often use an electric frying pan as it distributes the heat so evenly.  As you are cooking four, you can speed up the process by using whatever frying pans you have on hand all at the same time.

Melt enough butter to cover the base of the pan and put in the dough.  Cook on a slow to moderate heat.  You do not want the katoumari to burn. Cook on one side until it is a lovely golden brown colour, then turn and cook the other side to the same colour.  Add a little more butter as you need – they can, and should, soak up quite a lot of butter. The katoumari should each take about half and hour to cook.

Take out of pan and sprinkle with a little water and ground cloves mixed with sugar – a very liberal amount on each katoumari.

Pull apart just prior to serving – there should be lots of crispy outside pieces, and some softer inside pieces.  It should be light and flaky.

This quantity makes 4 katoumari.  They may be frozen and reheated from frozen in the oven. Or defrosted before reheating in the oven.  If freezing, do not add the clove and sugar mixture.  This is done just before serving.

As most people seem to like the crunchy pieces you can achieve this when reheating in the oven – just cook in a moderate oven until it is nice and crunchy (to your taste).  Sprinkle with clove and sugar mixture and serve.