PESTIL
TURKEY | SYRIA
This recipe comes from my great friend Filiz Hosukoglu in Gaziantep, Turkey, where they make this grape leather (pestil), more or less the same way my aunt used to make it in Mashta el-Helou in Syria. The time to make pestil is September when the grapes have ripened and are ready to be picked. Here is Filiz’s description of how her grandmother made pestil: “The grapes are brought home, washed, then transferred into a rectangular-shaped container (called sal) made of stone or wood. White soil (a kind of soil with 50 to 90 percent calcium carbonate) is spread over the grapes. This white soil decreases the acidity of the grape juice and helps it to settle. Mostly men with wooden sabots on their feet press the grapes to get the juice out.” When I read Filiz’s note, it immediately brought back childhood memories of when my aunt made malban (the Arabic name for pestil) and how she allowed us children to trample the grapes. I personally don’t remember men participating in the making of malban. It was only my mother, my aunt, and our female cousins—in those long gone days there were only family members living in Mashta el-Helou—who every summer set about making industrial quantities of malban. Once the juice was strained, it was boiled and skimmed off. I can still see my mother and aunt in the courtyard tending to a huge pot in which they boiled the grape juice. They kept stirring the juice until it reached the desired consistency, then they poured it over white sheets and spread it thinly using an implement similar to a plasterer’s trowel. Before doing this, they gave each of us children a soup bowl full of the boiled-down grape juice, which we wolfed down in no time before swarming around my mother and aunt to watch them spread the concentrated juice. It took a couple of days for the juice to dry and become “leather,” at which point everyone went back to work, peeling the grape leather off the sheets, cutting it into squares, and folding it like handkerchiefs before being stored in wooden boxes to use in winter months. This malban was our sweet snack of choice wrapped around walnut halves. Here is Filiz’s recipe, which you can make in your kitchen, spreading the thickened juice on silicone baking mats instead of cotton sheets. Pestil lasts a whole year, until the next grape season.
SERVES 8 TO 10
4 tablespoons wheat starch
2 tablespoons raw cane sugar
2 tablespoons grape molasses (pekmez)
1. Mix the wheat starch with 2 cups (500 ml) water in a medium saucepan. Add the sugar and grape molasses and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let bubble gently for about 15 minutes, until the mixture is very creamy.
2. Spread the pestil with a spatula over ½ sheet pan lined with a silicone baking mat. Let dry either in a very low oven or on your kitchen counter. Once dry, cut into large squares and fold like handkerchiefs to serve. Store in a closed container in a cool place where they will keep for one year, possibly longer.