Flavours of home is a series of recipes from around the world cooked by people at home in Otago. In the third of our videos, Atha Naziris from Greece shows us how to make baklava.
Baklava, a rich pastry stuffed with nuts and soaked in syrup, is a special treat all round the eastern Mediterranean. It can be made in big trays and cut into diamond shapes, but if he only wants 15 or 18 for a dinner party, Mr Naziris likes to make cigar-shaped baklava.
Cigar-shaped baklava
Makes about 30
For the filling:
1 ½ cups walnuts
½ cup almonds
¼ cup caster sugar
1-2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp allspice
for the wrapping:
20 sheets filo pastry
150g unsalted butter, melted
for the syrup
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup water
1 cinnamon stick
1 lemon.
To make the filling:
Chop or process the nuts in a food processor so you have a variation of chunky and powdery pieces.
Mix in sugar and spices - it should look like the colour of milk chocolate.
To make the baklava:
Lay out a sheet of filo and dab with butter. Lay a second sheet on top and dab with butter again. Cut the sheet into three.
Put a generous teaspoon of filling on one end of the strip and roll up to about halfway. Fold in the sides and continue rolling to make a cigar shape.
Place baklava on a buttered baking tray with the seams underneath.
When you have made enough, brush with butter and sprinkle over some of the fine nut and spice mix from the filling.
Bake at 180degC (170degC fan) for about 12 minutes, but check at about 8 minutes. They should be a golden tan colour rather than brown.
To make the syrup:
Put water, sugar and cinnamon stick in a pot. Add the zest of the lemon cut into fine strips.
Bring to boil, stirring so the sugar dissolves and simmer uncovered for about 2 minutes.
When the baklava rolls are cooked, put them in a deep plate and pour over the syrup and squeeze over the juice of the lemon if wished.
Allow to soak for 24 hours before eating. Although it looks like a lot of syrup, the baklava will absorb it and become moist inside. Turn during the soaking.
Sprinkle a little more cinnamon and top with the lemon zest.
Tips
• Buy fresh, not frozen filo pastry and check the use by date. Keep the roll of filo covered with a damp cloth while you are working so it doesn't dry out. Store unused filo in its plastic bag in the fridge.
• For fine nuts to sprinkle over the baklava, shake the bowl of filling so the large bits of nut come to the top and the powdery stuff falls to the bottom.
• When zesting the lemon, use a zester or peel fine strips, avoiding the white pith, which is bitter. Slice the strips into fine julienne.
• Baked baklava, without the syrup, will keep in an airtight container for a week. When soaked, it will last a few days in a container in the fridge.
• It doesn't matter too much whether you pour hot syrup over hot baklava or wait until they are cold, or if one is hot and the other cold.
• Allow two to three cigar-shaped baklava per person for dessert. Serve with thick yoghurt or cream, and perhaps garnish with mint. It is also very good with coffee or tea.
As a child growing up in Wellington, he enjoyed eating Greek comfort food at home - things like haricot bean vegetable soup, stuffed green peppers, keftedes (meatballs), homemade pita bread and moussaka made with potato because you couldn't get eggplant in the 1950s, he said. Even olive oil had to be specially imported.
Thanks to Afife Harris and Leith Distributors.
