Kaymak Recipe

I don't remember where it was, but I told you before. The first time we moved to Spain. One Saturday morning, my husband got up and said, "I'm going to buy kaymak" and went out as if kaymak is something like water, you can find it everywhere in Spain. You might find it in Germany, you maybe find it in UK, but Spain is not a country where you can find Turkish products easily or it doesn't have a cuisine where that has common ingredients with Turkish cuisine like Balkan countries. As a result, Yasin came back with brie cheese in hand. It was the closest thing he found to kaymak.

In time, I chose to make kaymak at home, as every dish and ingredient such as şalgam suyu, sucuk and doner, which we can not find here. When I first did it, my husband was the first to taste it after me. "Is it like kaymak or a good substitute for kaymak?" I asked. "Better than kaymak," he said. When I got the same reaction from my friends, whom I invited to breakfast later on, I was sure it was a success.

It is unfortunately not possible to obtain kaymak by natural means, as raw milk sales are prohibited in Spain and even the fattiest of store bought milk is skim-free and does not give any tangible amount of cream. That's why I used the second best option, heavy cream.

I get comments on the recipes that use heavy cream, "but there are additives / preservatives in heavy cream". Unfortunately, there is no answer I can give to that. I did not add the additives and unfortunately there is nothing I can do to prevent it. If you know a very good natural alternative you can use it, I don't. If you don't know the alternative and don't want to use anything with additives, you can choose not to make recipes that require heavy cream. I do not choose.

Going back to the recipe ... I use a cream with 35% fat content. It doesn't have any other ingredients. The rationale of the recipe is to evaporate the water in the cream. While doing this, it is important that it does not burn/stick to the pan, not curdle and remain in a suitable consistency. It is necessary to cook at low heat without rushing so that it does not burn. Again, low temperature provides an advantage for nor curdling, but does not guarantee it. The cream can sometimes be curdled just while whisking. If you haven't made a big mistake, such as squeezing lemon into the cream or cooking at very high temperatures for a long time, etc. it's probably not caused by something you did.

You can do a test such as while making a jam to see if your kaymak is ready. When you press a spatula or wooden spoon through the middle of the boiling cream in the pan, a line where you can see the pan forms in the middle, and if this line does not close immediately, it means that your kaymak is ready. It is still fluid when taken from the stove, and when it cools down, it becomes solid. When it is kept in the refrigerator, it hardens a lot, so I recommend keeping it at room temperature for a while before using it.

Enjoy the recipe...

Bon Appetit...