Zerefet — Broken Flatbread with Kurût and Garlic Yogurt

Name: Zerefet — Broken Flatbread with Kurût and Garlic Yogurt
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 70 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 6 piece Kurût (see recipe Kurût — Dried Yogurt Whey Balls (Keşk); or dried kurut from a Turkish grocer); warm water for soaking, as needed; 400 g wheat flour (type 550); 1 tsp salt; 230 ml lukewarm water; 600 g yogurt (see recipe Mast — Homemade Yogurt; or shop-bought plain yogurt, 3.5 % fat); 1 tsp cornstarch; 200 ml water; 4 clove garlic; 80 g butter or margarine; 1 tsp red pepper flakes (Pul Biber)

A Kurdish classic from Dersim and Bingöl in eastern Turkey: Zerefet is an old dish of the Kurdish and Zaza cuisine of Dersim, for which thin flatbreads made from flour, water and salt are baked dry, broken into pieces and doused with warm dissolved Kurût and cold garlic yogurt. In Turkish it is called Zerfet or Zılfet. Hot butter or margarine with garlic and red pepper goes on top and mingles with the tangy Kurût, and the pieces of bread are soaked soft at the edges and still firm to the bite in the middle.

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Cook time

70 min

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Servings

🧂

Ingredients

View Original ↗

Nutrition

per serving

651 kcal

Calories

20 g

Protein

26 g

Fat

82 g

Carbs

Ingredients

For 4 servings

Estimated cost~€2.35 · ~€0.60/serving

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Instructions

1
Put the Kurût balls in a bowl, barely cover them with warm water and leave them to soak until soft.
2
Meanwhile, mix the flour and salt in a bowl, gradually pour in the lukewarm water and knead everything vigorously for about 8 minutes to a smooth, pliable dough. Cover the dough and leave it to rest so that it can be rolled out thinly later.
3
Divide the dough into 4 pieces and roll each one out on a lightly floured work surface with a rolling pin into a thin round about 2 mm thick, as large as the frying pan.
4
Heat a large, heavy frying pan without fat over a medium heat and cook the flatbreads one after another for 2 to 3 minutes per side until they are dry and firm with brown spots. Leave the flatbreads to cool on a rack so that they become crisp.
5
Peel the garlic, crush three cloves and finely chop one. Mash the soaked Kurût balls in their soaking water with a fork or blend them until smooth, then stir them together in a pan with 200 g yogurt, the cornstarch, the water and two of the crushed cloves until smooth.
6
Heat the Kurût mixture over a medium heat, stirring constantly and always in the same direction so that it doesn't curdle, until it steams and bubbles up gently once; then take it off the heat and keep it warm.
7
Stir the remaining yogurt (400 g) with the third crushed clove until smooth. Break the flatbreads into pieces ranging from walnut-sized to palm-sized and spread them out in a wide, deep bowl or divide them among four deep plates.
8
Pour the warm Kurût evenly over the pieces of bread and leave to soak briefly until the edges soften.
9
Spoon the cold garlic yogurt on top in large dollops. Heat the butter or margarine in a small frying pan until it foams, let the chopped garlic and red pepper flakes sizzle in it only briefly and drizzle the hot red fat over the Zerefet; serve immediately.
10
Tip: Without Kurût, the pieces of bread are simply topped with 600 g garlic yogurt, which is then not heated; as a shortcut for Kurût, 150 ml Kaşk (liquid whey and yogurt paste from a Persian grocer), thinned with water, will also do. Instead of in a frying pan, the flatbreads can be baked one after another on a baking tray in an oven preheated to 220 °C top and bottom heat on the middle shelf until dry and browned in spots, about 6 minutes. The baked flatbreads keep dry in a tin for two days, but Zerefet itself is eaten straight away.