35. Recipe: Baklava 2
Description
This article is from the Lebanon FAQ, by Alaa Dakroub dakroub@leb.net with numerous contributions by others.
35. Recipe: Baklava 2
Fillo dough (pastry leaves).
1 1/4 cups butter/margarine
1/4 cup sugar
1-2 tsp cinamon (ground)
4 cups almonds, slivered and chopped.
cloves (NOT ground)
syrup:
4 cups sugar
3 cups water
1/2 cup honey
1 stick cinamon
5-6 cloves (NOT ground)
Mix sugar, cinamon, sugar, and almonds.
Lay the fillo dough out on a table. Fillo dough will dry quickly, so
you'll need to work fast, so what spills out of the pan doesn't dry
(although it will anyway), and keep a damp towel on the rest of it (that
you had laid on the table) so it doesn't dry.
On a medium-sized, buttered pan (you'll need to melt the butter) lay
one of the sheets of dough. Butter it, and lay another on top of that.
Continue until you have 5-6 sheets of dough on the bottom of the pan.
Then lay another sheet, and do NOT butter it. On that, put some of the
almond mix, enough to cover it evenly, but not making a thick layer. On
that, lay another sheet of dough, butter it, and then another,
unbuttered. On that place some almond mix again. Repeat until all the
mix is gone, or you have only 4-5 sheets of dough left.
Fold in the dough that hangs from the side of the pan. Some of sthem
will be dry, so just cut them and discard them. Make sure to butter
all of them (except, of course, if they have almonds on them).Lay down
some more sheets of dough, buttering every one, and cutting off the
edges, that hang from the sides of the pan. here, I've found it easier
if you just lay the dough down, width of dough to length of pan. That
is to say, the width of the dough is sometimes about teh same size as
the length of the pan, and the length of the dough about twice the widht
of the pan, so lay the short side of the dough down along the length of
the pan, so that some (about half) of it will hang out the end. Then
butter it, and fold what hangs back in the pan, buttering that. This
way you get it to look better, and stick better.
When you're done with laying the sheets of dough down, make sure you
butter the first one VERY well, and sprinkle some water on it before you
put it in the oven. Also, with a sharp, pointy knife, cut the top few
sheets of dough, not getting all the way through, just sort of
"scratching" the top layer and marking the pieces, in rhombus-shaped
pieces. I find it easier to cut along lengthwise, and then sideways,
from corner to corner, and lines paralel toothat:
______________ | / / / / | |_/__/__/__/__| <--I HOPE you get this "drawing"..and i hope it's useful. |/ / / / /| |__/__/__/__/_|
(you get the idea).
Then, at the center of each rhombus, stick a clove, so that it keeps the
sheets of dough together. Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour, until
golden-brown, and the edges no longer touch the wall of the pan.
Syrup:
Place sugar and water in a pan and bring tooa boil Boil for 5 minutes,
then add honey and spices and simmer until all is combined well,
10 minutes maybe, enough for the spices to give off flavor.
Retain the syrup hot until the baklava comes out of the oven and cools.
Pour the hot syrup over the cold baklava. (some do it the other way, I
don't think it matters, as long as one is hot and the other cold, so
that it "boils" into the baklava and it saturates it well, whicle at the
same time keeps the top layer of filo dough crispy).
Note: I usually put in along with the spices a piece of lemon peel. A
friend of mine, on the other hand, uses 1-2 tbsp rosewater. They both
work well, and I sugest one of them.
Note2: (on syrup/baklava hot/cold thing): I think you can save
yourself some time if you just take the baklava out, and then start the
syrup, so that by the time you're done, the baklava will have cooled
down enough.
Note3: You may use wallnuts or baking pistachios instead of almonds, or
any wallnut/almond or pistachio/almond combo. I've never tried
pistachio/almond/wallnut all in one, but I don't think it would be good.
Anyway, I usually prefer not to put any wallnuts because they give off
wallnut oil, which I don't think is fitting. (I guess I could roast them
first, so they wouldn't give off the oil, but I'm not a big wallnut fan
as it is.) Pistachios make it extra-special. Make sure that, no
matter what you use, they're ground coarsly.
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