Food at the Market: Gözleme
The Vietnamese spring roll’s street-market monopoly is officially over. At the Ten Katemarkt in Amsterdam, for example, alongside the Vietnamese vendor, the hummus cart and the Syrian selling falafel, there’s a Turkish woman baking gözleme on a griddle right there on the spot. The new Market Food.
It’s the ever-recurring discussion: Is it a pancake or is it bread? Or, in the case of Turkish gözleme, pancake or flatbread? Fortunately, it makes no difference to the taste which category you assign gözleme to. It is made from a thin, round sheet of yufka dough (so bread after all?) consisting of flour, salt and water. The unleavened dough is thinner than a tortilla, but thicker than filo pastry.
Hot griddle
The dough is rolled out on a stick and then rolled out onto a round, hot, curved griddle (sac), lightly brushed with egg and butter and then covered with minced meat and onion, potato and chives, or, for example, spinach and feta. Every region or family has its own topping. Halfway through the cooking process, the flatbread is folded shut and baked until crisp on both sides.
When you buy one of these crescent-shaped folded pancakes, the vendor cuts it into pieces for you. She puts them in paper, so you can eat them while walking. The pancake itself is flaky, crisp and savory, and well worth the purchase price (€3) on its own. And inside, there’s that delicious filling too.
Gourmet gözleme
This dish, originally eaten for breakfast and also somewhat reminiscent of a Peking crêpe, is now mainly street food. And for us, the New Market Food. At the Ten Katemarkt in Amsterdam, there are already two gözleme makers working on weekends. I haven’t discovered it here yet, but in Turkey itself, gourmet versions of gözleme also exist. For example, with chocolate and orange zest, or smoked salmon with egg.
