Baklava

[greerwatson]

For the maryrenaultfics 10YO celebrations, I decided to make a Greek dessert as one of my dishes for the Taste of MRF bake-off. This was to honour Renault's historical novels, which are set in ancient Greece. (To honour her modern novels, I made a traditional English dinner, shared with my mother.)

Now, when I think of Greek desserts, I think of baklava. It doesn't go quite back to the period of which Renault wrote. However, a similar sort of pastry, called γάστριν (gastrin) was apparently made in Crete in Roman times. What I've made is a sort of bastard version of this recipe. The filling is almost authentic, but I used phyllo pastry instead of bothering to mix the gastrin dough.

Here are the ingredients I used:





This is the mixture of nuts and seeds that goes in the filling:

1/3 lb ground almonds 1/3 lb ground hazelnuts 1/3 lb ground walnuts 1/2 cup sesame seeds 1/4 cup poppy seeds 1/2 tsp black pepper

Okay, I left out the pepper. This won't surprise my sister in the least. She knows I hate "hot" food.





This is then mixed with 1/2 cup honey:





Given the amount of filling, I decided to use an 8" square cake tin, which I lined with aluminum foil. This made 16 squares. If one wants a flatter baklava, perhaps an 8"x12" pan should be used.

The original recipe calls for a dough that you roll out 1/8" thick and cut in three (with two layers of filling in between). I used phyllo pastry, instead. This comes in paper thin sheets. You lay them two at a time, painting melted butter over them, and then adding the next pair of sheets. I put eight sheets of phyllo in the bottom layer.





Then I put half the filling on, patting it down evenly.





Then repeat, so that there are three layers of phyllo (eight sheets each) and two layers of filling. When it is assembled ready for baking, it looks like this:





You then bake it in a preheated oven at 350°F for about 50 minutes, until golden brown.

As soon as it comes out of the oven, you pour hot syrup over it, and let it stand for a couple of hours until it's absorbed. However, the recipe for the syrup presented a problem. It mixed sugar and water (to reduce the cost), with honey and something called "petimezi". You see, in ancient times, they didn't have sugar. Things could be sweetened with honey, but also with grapes or figs. Petimezi is basically a sort of grape syrup.

There's a recipe on line. It starts, "65 pounds of white (pale green) grapes". (Hardly!)

Then it calls for "4 tablespoons of wood ash". (Not something I have lying handy round a house in downtown Toronto.)

So, as you can guess, I had to substitute.

1 cup grape juice 1/2 cup honey Bring to a boil and reduce to a syrup.

When the mixture comes to the boil, it bubbles up furiously. Turn down the heat, and stir constantly to keep it from boiling over.





It takes fifteen or twenty minutes to reduce it to a syrup.





Once the baklava are out of the oven, pour the syrup over the top. Leave it for a couple of hours to soak in.





Now, as we all know, the proof of the baklava is in the eating. So did the recipe work? What did it taste like?

First, let me show you what it looks like, cut and ready to eat:





Definitely baklava, all right; and that's the overall impression when you bite into it—though it's clearly not quite the same as the baklava that I buy at the supermarket. The filling has its own flavour, with both the walnuts and sesame seeds distinctly detectable, along with the faintest fruity molasses whiff, which I assume comes from the reduced grape-honey syrup. Very enjoyable.

I do think it might be better if I'd used a slightly larger pan, say 10" square. The smaller pan makes this into a fairly deep pastry, which filled the pan to the top. I'd say a few more layers of phyllo would be in order (for which there wouldn't have been room); but using a slightly larger pan would mean that the filling was spread a little thinner, which would serve the same purpose. Certainly, if you like a flaky baklava, a few extra top layers of phyllo would help.

Whether it's worth slaving over a hot stove stirring the fancy syrup is also a question. Is the flavour different? Yes. Sufficiently different?

Well, I used a dark honey: buckwheat, to be precise. Its flavour came through loud and clear. Perhaps, if I had used a light clover honey, the grape quality of the syrup would be more significant.

All in all, a successful baking!