Qedayîfa rêsî — Shredded Pastry Rolls with Walnuts in Syrup

Name: Qedayîfa rêsî — Shredded Pastry Rolls with Walnuts in Syrup
Prep time: 50 min
Cook time: 50 min
Total time: 100 min
Yield: 20 servings
Ingredients: 500 g sugar; 400 ml water; 1 tbsp lemon juice; 500 g kadayıf shredded pastry (fresh, or frozen and thawed in the fridge; from Turkish shops); 250 g butter or margarine (melted, lukewarm); 250 g walnuts; 2 tbsp sugar (for the filling)

A Kurdish classic from Diyarbakır and Mardin in southeastern Turkey: for Qedayîfa rêsî, fine strands of pastry are wrapped around a walnut filling, pushed together into crinkled rolls, baked until golden brown and soaked in syrup. In Turkish they are called Burma kadayıf, in Kurdish simply Qedayîf for short, and in Diyarbakır they are among the sweets served for Eid and to guests. On the outside the strands are crisp, inside they are moist with syrup, and a cut reveals a ring of chopped walnuts.

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Cook time

100 min

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Servings

🧂

Ingredients

View Original ↗

Nutrition

per serving

352 kcal

Calories

4 g

Protein

18 g

Fat

43 g

Carbs

Ingredients

For 20 servings

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Instructions

1
For the syrup, bring the sugar and water to the boil in a pan, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Add the lemon juice and simmer the syrup uncovered over a low heat without stirring again; be careful, hot sugar syrup causes severe burns.
2
Take the syrup off the heat and leave it to cool completely; it must be cold when the rolls come out of the oven. Finely chop the walnuts until they are about the size of grains of rice and mix them with the sugar for the filling.
3
Take the shredded pastry out of the pack, loosely pull it apart with your fingers so that no clumps remain stuck together, and keep it under a slightly damp tea towel. Brush an ovenproof dish of about 25 × 30 cm thinly with melted butter or margarine.
4
Lay out about 25 g shredded pastry on the work surface in a flat strip of even thickness, about 22 × 7 cm, lining the strands up lengthways, and drizzle with about 1 tbsp melted butter or margarine. Spread a heaped tbsp walnut filling in a line along the long edge.
5
Lay the handle of a wooden spoon or a smooth wooden rod about 1 cm thick on the line of walnuts and roll the pastry strip up tightly with the filling around it. Push the roll towards the middle from both ends with your fingers until it is compressed to about 10 cm and the strands crinkle, then pull out the rod with a slight twist.
6
Place the roll seam side down in the dish and shape all the others in the same way; pack the rolls tightly together so that they support each other as they bake. Drizzle the remaining melted butter or margarine evenly over the top.
7
Preheat the oven to 180 °C top and bottom heat. Bake the rolls on the middle shelf until they are a deep golden brown and crisp all over; if they are still pale on top, bake for another 5 minutes.
8
Take the dish out and immediately pour the cold syrup slowly over the hot rolls: cold syrup on hot pastry is soaked up, and the strands stay crisp on the outside. Only touch the hot dish with oven gloves.
9
Leave the rolls to stand uncovered at room temperature until they have absorbed the syrup, then lift them out of the dish.
10
Tip: Uncovered or loosely covered, the rolls keep for three to four days at room temperature, but get softer with each day. They become more festive with finely chopped pistachios instead of walnuts or with a little ground pistachio on top. Serve with Çay — Kurdish tea in a glass.