Nowruz Favorite · Almond-Cardamom Turnover
Qottab
Photo: Mehdi / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
It's the sweet descendant of a much older savory pastry called sanbosag — the same ancestor that, carried along old trade routes, eventually gave the world the samosa.
A dough enriched with yogurt and butter is filled with ground almonds or walnuts, sugar, and cardamom, folded into a crescent, and deep-fried until golden, then dusted with powdered sugar. Yazd's bakeries sell it year-round, with sales spiking around the Persian new year.
Why it's made this way: Yazd is Iran's best-known source for qottab, and the city's version — sweet, cardamom-forward, and tied to Nowruz — is treated as the standard-bearer for the pastry nationwide.
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