My family and I are usually forced to make popcorn balls each year during Christmas at the hands of my taskmaster grandmother. What are popcorn balls, you ask? Well, you basically take two kinds of Karo syrup, pop more popcorn than you would see even in a movie theater popper, and then mix the two together. Did I mention that the syrup is molten lava hot, and to combat the stickiness of the sugar mixture you have to cover your hands in butter? Yeah, it’s like that. Mostly it’s a group of us gathered around the table swearing. I’ve developed a strategy of defaulting to my dad while I make one ball in the time it takes everyone else to make five. So far, no one has really noticed. The trick is making it look like you’re doing something. Everyone else is far too concerned with the pain to notice the shirking.
I walked downstairs for some coffee one afternoon and walked into a kitchen full of women laboring over a tepsie of baklava. This requires some back story.
1. Tepsie are baking pans that I’ve never seen in any other place before. They are always round and come in various sizes, from large to humongous. I once used a large tepsie to serve a breakfast that had two plates, other accoutrements and two mugs and still had tons of room. They are used to make byrek first and foremost.
2. Byrek is a ubiquitous Balkan pastry filled with any variety of things. My favorite is the byrek my host mom makes with tomatoes and onions, but there are pretty good byrek places on the street where you can buy byrek with eggs and a dairy product that tastes like cheese but has the texture of dry cottage cheese. It is a lot of work to make because you have to make several layers of dough to make it flaky and crispy, but it’s delicious.
3. “Byrek” is also a catch-all translation for any kind of desert. “Byrek me chocolate” (literally: byrek with chocolate) is what I’ve heard brownies called, “Byrek me kungull” (byrek with pumpkin, although “kungull” can really mean zucchini, pumpkin or any variety of anything that is remotely like this) is pumpkin pie. Still trying to rap my head around how the word for a layered, greasy pastry is used to describe American desserts, but that is the wonder of the Albanian language. Kate and I were laughing about this shoddy translation the other day.
4. Baklava is commonly made for Bajram, a holiday celebrated by Albanian Muslims, and for New Years.
And now to the important part: how do you make baklava? Here’s a recipe that the Peace Corps gave us, but it involves a serious amount of cheating because it tells us to buy frozen filo dough. My family not only made the dough, but shelled and chopped all the walnuts. I can’t stress how much work it is to make a completely homemade baklava.
Ingredients
* 4 cups finely chopped walnuts
* 1/4 cup sugar
* 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
* 1 cup butter, melted
* 1 (16 ounce) package frozen filo dough.
* SYRUP:
* 1 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup water
* 1/4 cup honey
* 1 teaspoon lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
1. In a bowl, combine the walnuts, sugar and cinnamon; set aside. Grease a 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish with some of the melted butter. Unroll filo dough sheets (keep dough covered with plastic wrap while assembling).
2. Place one sheet of filo in baking dish; brush with butter. Top with a second sheet; brush with butter. Fold short ends under to fit the dish. Sprinkle with about 1/4 cup nut mixture. Repeat 18 times, layering two sheets, brushing with butter and sprinkling with nut mixture. Top with remaining dough; brush with butter. Cut into 2-in. diamonds with a sharp knife.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-55 minutes or until golden brown. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the syrup ingredients; bring to a boil until the water becomes red, well the color of caramel. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Pour over warm baklava.
In reality, homemade baklava involves spending about 2 – 3 hours rolling out all the individual layers of dough by hand. You basically take a ball of dough the size of a large gumball and roll it out until it is over a foot wide… then you have to bake that single layer. Imagine having to repeat that process for twenty or so odd times.
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