For those of you who are inclined to doubt the ritual/political significance of pastry in general and baklava in particular, I offer for your consideration the Baklava Procession. The Baklava Procession — and this is no joke — was an elaborate military ceremony in which the Ottoman Sultan’s private guardsmen, known as janissaries, would parade […]
READ ONHumor writer Polly Frost undertakes an in-depth study of carbohydrates and submits this highly revealing report. Thanks for all your hard work, Polly.
READ ONBaklava is the only pastry I know that has its own formalized etiquette, which turkishculture.org describes in this way: For the initiated, eating baklava has its own rules. Separating the top and lower layers, or cutting through the lozenge shaped pieces with a knife or fork is frowned upon. Instead you should first leisurely survey […]
READ ONIt’s interesting that with so many peoples around the Central Asian region claiming baklava as their own, that almost all of them use the same word to describe it. So where does that word come from? Most linguists believe it’s Mongolian, which adds weight to the Turkish origin argument, since before they settled in Anatolia, […]
READ ONI’ve gotten a little, what’s popular business lingo now…”push back” on yesterday’s post attributing baklava to the Turks. Pastries layered with nuts hail from Azerbaijan! Dough stretching techniques were first invented by the Greeks! Spices are a clear contribution of the Arabs! Some of these claims hold more water than others, however it’s beyond dispute […]
READ ONWell, no, but not because I don’t approve of it. Rose water is a traditional baklava flavoring that’s still quite common, even here in the US. I didn’t include it because it’s not easy to get outside of large cities. However if you have access to some, add a teaspoon to your nut mixture. Some […]
READ ONIt’s a tough question, because it all depends on what you mean by baklava. I get frustrated reading a lot of food history, because so many food historians seem to want to trace everything back to antiquity. When cheesecake cookbook authors start talking about the Minoans, or deep-dish pizza recipe writers refer to the Etruscans, […]
READ ONHmm…remind you of anything? If you said croissant dough or puff pastry, then you get to day’s cash prize (conditions apply, subject to void where prohibited). Filo dough is the ancestor of so-called “laminated” (i.e. “layered”) doughs. The chief differences being that while filo relies on melted butter and individual stacked sheets, laminated doughs employ […]
READ ON…is how I like my baklava. Commercially-made filo dough doesn’t taste like much, so why not go where the flavor is? Like any simple recipe, the better your base ingredients, the better the end product will be, so get good butter, grind your spices fresh, you know the drill. This recipe fits a 9″ x […]
READ ONSo if you’re not making your own filo, how do you improve on the usual mass-produced stuff? One answer is the nuts. Most of the baklava you find in stores contains one or two different kinds of nuts, usually walnuts with perhaps a few almonds mixed in. That’s because for a larger manufacturers more exotic […]
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