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Baking Expert
Catherine Christiansen
Turkish Baklava
This summer I went to Turkey, a place I had never imagined going. Yet once I had my ticket, all I could do was imagine. Minarets and mosques, flying carpets and magic lamps, lamb with yogurt and… baklava.
Once I arrived I found it all to be true, Istanbul is a big, exotic, magical, bustling city filled with miraculous mosques, vibrant markets, constant showmanship and five times a day, the sound of prayer reminding everyone stop and be present. The city smells of exotic spices, chai tea, humanity and tobacco, and the colorful patterns on carpets and scarves and in every window continue the spell. I was bedazzled.
And as for the baklava… not so much.
It wasn’t until we left the teeming city and arrived in the tiny town of Gumusuluk on the Aegean Sea that pastry enchantment occurred. Walking home late one evening we passed a brightly lit little place that looked like a Laundromat but mentioned pastry on its sign. An allnight sugar shack? I gotta see this.
Open sesame and alakazam, we came upon a pastry case filled with some of the most beautiful cakes and cookies I’d ever seen. “What kinds of pastry elves were at work here?” I asked myself. Then I ordered two of everything.
Once we got to our place, it was the pieces of baklava that got the first bite and it was there that we stopped. Lightly sweet with layer after layer of delicate fillo crunch, and just a whisper of spice in the ground walnuts. We were lost. No need to go further. We demolished every piece of crispy sweetness and left the cookies and whatnot for breakfast.
Back home in Colorado, I set out to duplicate this charmed delicacy. After trial and a few sticky errors, I found that the Turkish secret is to pre-cut the pastry before it goes in the oven and drizzle the lemon-spiked syrup along those cuts when it comes out. This keeps the fillo crispy and lets each layer deliver its own sweet secret.
Don’t let working with fillo intimidate you; just keep it covered so it doesn’t dry out, be liberal with the butter and let your inner fearless pastry elf take over.
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