Name: Saffron-Layered Rice Pudding (Astarli Sütlaç)
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Turkey
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon pine nuts; 1 tablespoon currants; 1 drop geranium oil (or rose water); 5 saffron threads; pinch of salt; 1 tablespoon rice flour; 750 ml (26 fl oz/3 cups) milk; 2 tablespoons rice flour; 100 g (3½ oz/½ cup) rice; 1 piece mastic crystal (less than 1 g/1/25 oz); 1 tablespoon sugar; 4 tablespoons pomegranate seeds; 20 candied or roasted chickpeas; 50 g (1¾ oz/¼ cup) rice; 110 g (3¾ oz/½ cup) sugar

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Anatolia

By David Dale and Somer Sivrioglu

Published 2015

About

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