Baklava

Layered filo and nuts where cold syrup meets hot pastry, which is the only combination that does not go soggy.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (butter), honey.

Ingredients

For the pastry

• 500 g filo pastry
• 300 g butter, clarified
• 400 g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 100 g almonds, roughly chopped
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar

For the syrup

• 400 g caster sugar
• 300 ml water
• 150 g honey
• 1 strip lemon peel
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Method

1. COLD SYRUP ONTO HOT PASTRY. One of the two must be cold and it is easier to make this one the syrup, because the baklava has to be cut before baking and cannot wait. Hot syrup onto hot pastry turns the whole tray to a sweet sponge within a minute; cold onto hot is drawn up into the layers while they are still crisp, and they stay crisp.
2. SO THE SYRUP IS MADE FIRST and left to go completely cold, two hours ahead or the night before.
3. THE BUTTER IS CLARIFIED and it is not fussiness. The milk solids in whole butter burn over the long bake and leave brown speckles and a scorched taste through the layers. Melt it gently, let it settle, and pour off the clear yellow, leaving the white sediment behind.
4. Syrup: sugar, water, honey, peel and cinnamon brought to the boil and simmered 10 minutes. Lemon juice in at the end. Cooled completely and the solids strained out.
5. Nuts chopped to the size of peppercorns -- too fine and the filling packs into a paste, too coarse and the layers will not sit flat. Mixed with the cinnamon, cloves and sugar.
6. A deep tin brushed with clarified butter. Eight sheets of filo laid in, each brushed, keeping the rest under a damp cloth.
7. A third of the nuts scattered over. Four sheets, buttered. Another third. Four sheets. The last third. Then eight sheets on top, every one buttered, and the top one brushed generously.
8. CUT ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO THE BASE BEFORE BAKING, in diamonds or squares. Baked whole and cut afterwards, the top shatters and the syrup cannot reach the middle layers.
9. Baked at 160C for 1 hour 15 minutes. Low and long: hot and fast browns the top before the inner layers have dried, and a damp layer in the middle never crisps.
10. Straight out of the oven, the COLD syrup ladled over the whole tray, slowly, letting it sink in between additions. It will hiss.
11. LEFT 6 HOURS AT LEAST AND OVERNIGHT IS BETTER, uncovered, at room temperature. Cut into while warm it is sweet pastry; left, it becomes something else entirely.
12. Never refrigerated, which makes the filo leathery.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Greece · All recipes