Saffron-Layered Rice Pudding

This layered dessert is a speciality of the southeastern city of Gaziantep (best known for baklava). In the Turkish name, the word sütlaç (pronounced ‘sutlatch’) means ‘milky rice pudding’ and the word astarlı means ‘the lining of a jacket’.

Saffron—either home-grown or imported from Persia—was an important ingredient in Ottoman cuisine, because it allowed the sultans to show off their wealth. Pretentious people got into the habit of leaving the saffron threa