Hello Blaze Babes. Time to finish up our Lebanese meal with dessert, because those people who eat entrees and soup or salad and call that a complete meal are simply bad and wrong. My kids tell me they have separate stomachs for dessert that don’t get full from healthy food. I think they have the right idea.

First, my May Blaze is out, Surprise Me . . . the sequel to my April Wrong Bed book. It’s the story of Melanie who has spent her whole life falling for bad boys, but finally gets love right with the last man she expects to. Since it’s a Wrong Bed, of course we have fun stuff right at the beginning.

But today we’re talking about endings. Sweet endings. Baklava, which in Lebanon is called something different only I have no idea how to spell it properly since I’ve only heard my Dad say it (ba’laywi?), is made in many wonderfully sweet and crunchy shapes and sizes with different doughs and nuts. We’ll keep it simple here.

If you haven’t worked with phyllo before, don’t be intimidated. Seriously, people run shrieking when it’s mentioned, but you’re just putting together ingredients someone else already took the trouble to make, so don’t be scared, there is nothing complicated about it.

Baklava

Syrup
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
Few drops lemon juice
1 tsp. rose or orange flower water (optional)

Combine sugar, water and lemon juice in saucepan. Boil for 10 minutes or until slightly viscous (225o). If using rose water, add it and bring the syrup just back to a boil before removing from heat. Let the syrup cool while making baklava.

Pastry
2 cups raw pistachios
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon or more to taste (if you like rose water or orange flower water, use 1or 2 tsp. of one of those instead)
1 lb. phyllo dough, thawed if frozen
½ to 3/4 cup (1 to 1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, melted (use the smaller amount first, and add if it runs out)
1 recipe syrup (see above)

Toast pistachios on a baking sheet at 350o until they are fragrant, 5-6 minutes. Let cool and chop finely (I use food processor). Mix with sugar and cinnamon or flower water. That’s the filling. Simple!

Preheat oven to 350o

Make clarified butter: Melt butter in a small saucepan and pour into a narrow jar or measuring cup so that the milk solids fall to the bottom and the clear yellow butterfat is on top. If you get the milk solids into the phyllo they can burn. Still nothing hard!

Unroll phyllo sheets onto flat work surface and cover with a barely damp towel, then re-cover whenever you’re not actually peeling off a sheet. You don’t want it to dry out or it will crack, but you don’t want it getting soggy either.

Peel off a sheet and lay it on your work surface or on a flat baking sheet. Using a pastry brush, dip into the clear part of the butter and paint the phyllo with it, covering surface completely. You’ll need to be gentle so the dough won’t tear, but this is not rocket science. In fact it’s art class! If it tears, don’t worry, you can hide it when you roll.

Lay another sheet over the first one, matching edges as best you can, but don’t sweat it. Paint this one with more butter.

With the short edge of the two buttered phyllo sheets toward you, pour a ½ inch line of the nut filling about an inch from the end nearest you (more if you want, less if you want, you can’t screw it up) and roll into a long, thin cylinder. Put the cylinder on a baking sheet (use one with a rim this time) and paint the cylinder with more butter to keep the exposed dough moist.

Repeat the process until the nuts are used up, melting more butter if you need to.

Bake baklava rolls about 20 minutes until golden. Take out of the oven and while still hot, pour the room-temperature syrup over, saturating each piece. When cool, cut into lengths you want to serve.

That’s it! It is so delicious, you will be hooked I promise. And it’s less complicated than baking and frosting a scratch cake. Give it a try!

Next month we’ll get back to the good old USA and start a great outdoor meal for summer.

Cheers and happy reading!

Isabel

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 15th, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Isabel Sharpe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.