Spice (30 page)

It’s very labor intensive to peel chestnuts. Unfortunately, most whole peeled chestnuts and chestnut purées are sweetened. I like to use flash-frozen peeled chestnuts from Italy. You can find them online at www.auiswisscatalogue.com.

Spinach Variation

You can use spinach instead of kale in these malfati. Use twice as much chopped spinach (8 cups) because it cooks down and loses a lot more water than kale.

BAKLAVA

While visiting my friend Ayfer Unsal in her hometown of Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, I came to understand that making baklava is a serious and precise art. A baklava chef trains his entire life. The baklava shop Ayfer and I visited consisted of four floors. The top floor of the baklava shop employed young children (ages eight to fourteen), who were covered in so much cornstarch that their dark arms—and even their eyelashes—were dusted white. These were the beginning baklava chefs, and their job was to make the phyllo dough from scratch, rolling and rolling and stretching until the dough was as thin as parchment.

On the third floor, many men worked hard to assemble the baklava. They ground pistachios very finely with sugar and then layered them in between the homemade phyllo dough. They brushed the phyllo carefully with goat’s milk butter, which had such a heady scent that I could smell it before I entered the room. Baklava is such a serious undertaking in this part of Turkey that they grow a special pistachio for use in the dessert, and it is not used for pilafs or snacking or anything else. These pistachios are as green as asparagus and smell like flowers, the way black walnuts do.

The second floor contained the oven, where the chef, who had trained his whole life, stood at the mouth of a very large, wood-fired oven. Only this chef could remove the pan of baklava from the oven at just the right moment and soak it with syrup. He told us that to be right, the baklava must “dance” (in other words, rise from the sides and bottom of the pan) when the syrup hits it. This way, just the right amount of syrup is absorbed—after being distributed in a fanatical evenness—to create the perfect sweetness and golden-brown, caramely top.

Ayfer and I finally reached the bottom floor of the shop, which housed the boutique where you could buy the baklava to take away or eat there with a cup of black tea. The shop was bustling with ladies, taking away beautifully packaged baklava. Very small boys—perhaps as young as six, and on track to become chefs—swept the floors and kept the shop clean. The pastry case was small but precious and you could buy baklava by the piece or by the whole, round, perfect pie.

The baklava at this particular shop was lighter, more perfumey, and less sweet than Greek versions I’ve tried, owing to the goat’s milk butter, the special, flowery pistachios, and the amount of syrup used for soaking. The phyllo was thin, crisp, and perfectly caramelized and dissolved like sugar wafers in my mouth.

Black Walnut Baklava

There are great arguments about baklava:
my mom makes the best, my aunt makes the best, baklava is Greek, baklava is Armenian, baklava is Turkish,
and so on. But this is my favorite version: the one from Oleana, that our pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick has perfected over the years.

If you like sweet wine with your dessert, try to find a Greek dessert wine made from the muscat grape on the island of Samos. If you can’t find that, a Moscatel de Malaga from Spain will be delicious.

M
AKES ONE
8-
İNCH BAKLAVA OR ABOUT
16
PİECES

For the Baklava

8 ounces walnut halves (about 2½ cups)

5 ounces black walnuts pieces (about 1 cup; see note on page 131)

¾ cup sugar

2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons freshly grated or ground nutmeg

2 sticks butter, melted

½ package phyllo dough

For the Syrup

1½ cups water

¾ cup sugar

½ cup honey

2 cinnamon sticks

5 to 6 whole cloves

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

To Make the Baklava

1.
Toast both kinds of walnuts separately for about 8 minutes, or until lightly browned (see Toasting Nuts, page 91).

2.
Coarsely chop the regular walnuts so theyare similar in size to the black walnuts (black walnuts usually come in smaller pieces).

3.
In a small mixing bowl, toss both kinds of walnuts with the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

4.
Brush an 8-inch square pan (see note on the pan, below) with some melted butter.

5.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.

6.
Cut eighteen 8-inch squares of phyllo dough. Cover the squares with a towel to prevent them from drying out.

7.
Lay a piece of phyllo in the bottom of thebuttered pan and brush it generously with melted butter. Lay another layer of phyllo dough over this and brush it again, generously, with melted butter. Repeat this process until you have 8 buttered layers. Some pieces of the phyllo may need to be trimmed or patched.

8.
Make a layer of nuts with ½ of the nut filling (about 1½ cups).

9.
Top the nuts with 4 sheets of phyllo, brushing generously with butter between the layers.

10.
Spread the remaining nut mixture onto the top buttered phyllo sheet.

11.
Top the nuts off with 6 more layers of phyllo (with butter between the layers) to finish it.

12.
Before baking, cut the baklava into four 4-inch square quarters. Then cut each on both diagonals into 4 more pieces.

13.
Place the pan on a baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes. The baklava will start to turn light golden brown. Lower the oven heat to 300°F and bake for 20 minutes more.

To Make the Syrup

1.
While the baklava is baking, make the syrup by combining the water, sugar, honey, cinnamon sticks, and cloves in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat to medium. Stir to help dissolve the sugar, and continue cooking at a brisk simmer for about 20 minutes, until the syrup thickens and you have 1½ cups.

2.
Stir in the lemon juice, and keep the syrup warm.

3.
When the baklava comes out of the oven, pour the warm syrup evenly over the pan. Cool completely.

4.
Cut through each marked piece and carefully lift from the pan. If you’re not using a disposable pan, lift out a middle piece first with a narrow offset spatula; the other pieces will come out easily. See the note below about the pan.

Note on Black Walnuts

At Oleana, we use black walnuts to make our baklava because their taste resembles that of the pistachios in Gaziantep, used to flavor their famous baklava. Black walnuts have a floral flavor that is stronger than regular walnuts. Eastern black walnuts are native to the central and eastern United States, and they are harder to find than regular walnuts. We found them on the Internet at www.black-walnuts.com. You can also substitute pistachios or regular walnuts in this recipe, but you would be cheating yourself out of the black walnut experience.

Note on the Pan

It is helpful to use an 8-inch disposable aluminum pan for baklava. This way, when it’s time to remove the baklava, you can cut through one side of the pan, slicing through the corners, and flatten out the side. You can then slide the spatula under the first piece of baklava, and lift it easily out of the pan.