plate 49: turkey

I don't know if it had something to do with the fez he wore on his wedding day, but I've believed for years that my maternal great-grandfather was born in Turkey. But then someone someday found out it wasn't so. The likely scenario was that he was there during WWI - we're pretty sure he was born in Pisa. A little disappointing, because when I started this blog I thought I had Turkish in me, which would have been cool, but alas I don't.

That certainly won't stop me from eating the country's cuisine though. I absolutely adore Turkish food. I thought my love of it had something to do with being one-gazillionth Turkish, but now we know this isn't the case. Aaaaanyway, one of my all-time favourite dishes is - surprise, surprise - a dessert.

Baklava is my Turkish dessert of choice. Pronounced by my family in the Arabic way: "buk-louwa". (That's because I do have Middle Eastern in me - my grandparents were born in Egypt, which I think I've mentioned before.) There's something magical about baklava's golden layers of paper-thin pastry, the nuttiness of the filling and the main deliciousness - that lusciously sticky and intensely sweet sugar and rosewater syrup that's poured over the top once the baklava's pulled out of the oven. The thought of it instantly makes my mouth water.

I was so pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to make, too. These days Turkish home cooks will use bought filo pastry rather than making it themselves, so I happily followed their example. I had always had trouble with filo, buying the frozen packs that would dry out and crack in a second. Then I discovered fridge filo. Whenever you work with filo, please buy it from the chilled section. It doesn't dry out on you and is so much easier to work with. The other trick to using filo is to cover all your sheets in a little tea towel blanket. First a dry tea towel, then a damp one so they don't dry up.

So pulled the filo out of the fridge I did and layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer I went, placing each sheet of filo in my cake tin brushing each one with melted butter in the process. After five layers I sprinkled over some chopped pistachios, then added five more layers, more pistachio, then another five filo sheets.

Instead of pistachios you can use walnuts or almonds, or get adventurous like Turkey's "Baklava King" Nadir Gullu who's the biggest baklava producer in the world, making about 55 varieties. 55! And to work for him you have to complete a seven-year apprenticeship to become a master filo roller. What a hot job title! "What do you do?" "Oh, you know, I'm just a master filo roller."

An article about Nadir revealed his instruction to tasting baklava: it has to use all the senses. Dig your fork in and you must hear a rewarding crunch as you cut - check. Smell it and you should get a whiff of baked pastry perfumed with rosewater - check. And lastly it should have a terrific texture in your mouth, a mixture of crispiness from the pastry and nuts, and a moist stickiness from the syrup - check. To eat it, use your hands (forget the fork), devour in a few bites, then lick your fingers to enjoy every last skerrick of syrup. Ah, pure baklava bliss.

Being picky, I would have liked the baklava to be higher. I guess I could have kept stacking the filo as high as I wanted, but as I always do, I followed the recipe to the letter. The taste was A-1 though. Incredible. So sweet and scrumptious. Forget Atkins or Lite 'n Easy, I'm starting the baklava diet. It makes you extremely happy - who's in?