Table of Contents
- While it's a somewhat sticky affair, it's a beautiful pairing with 抹茶. There are many different variations, but they all revolve around having layers of fillo dough brushed with ghee, filling them with nuts, baking them and then drowning them in syrup.
- Traditionally, they are cut into a diamond shape, which inspired me to use them in my ひな祭り 茶事. Below I'm taking it one step further by using three layers (green, white, rose).
- During my research, however, I also discovered the midye baklava, which has the equally appropriate for March mussel shape and is filled with a (buffalo) milk cream.
ひしバクラワ
Fills my medium baking tray, makes about 15 nice diamonds.
- 300 gr fillo dough, cut to the dimensions of the baking tray (ideally slightly larger)
- 100 gr ghee, melted
Layer 10 fillo sheets in the tray, brushing each with melted ghee. After the 12th sheet, you start with the coloured layers. They need to be considerably thick, around 4 mm. Then layer 8 fillo sheets on top. Finish with 4 very generously brushed sheets.
- Green layer: Plain pistachio is perfect, but it needs to be very finely chooped or even mixed with paste so that it doesn't crumble too much when cut. The colour is going to turn olive in the oven, so you could add a tiny pinch of baking soda, a little bit of fat to isolate it and add some colour, too.
- White layer: I used plain skinned almonds, and that worked fine. Again, add some fat and make it quite thick so that it's easily visible and doesn't disintegrate. But drawing from the midye baklava, I think a layer of milk and semolina (see below), spiced with cardamom, would be perfect.
- Red layer: I chopped together pecans, saffron, goji berries and sandalwood, and it turned out quite nice. Goji actually already are quite a good pairing. In winter, I can get the actually red Gublernüsse for this!
Once assembled, cut ⅔ throw, then 1 hour at 180° in the oven, then drown in syrup while hot. The syrup:
- 100 gr sugar
- 100 gr light honey
- 100 gr water
Reduce a fair bit. After drowning, wait for 4 hours. Lift out of the tray, then finish cutting.
Midye Baklava
Instead of layering the fillo, you play Miyake with a single sheet and place some filling inside before forming a tortello. Place tortellos in a baking dish, drizzle ghee over it, bake at 170° C for 45'. Again, drown in syrup.
The joy is the filling, however!
- 250 ml buffalo milk (which I could get here
- 25 gr semolina
- 10 gr sugar
- Cardamom, vanilla, tonka…
Heat milk to 60°, then stir in semolina. Take off the heat, cover and let finish for 5'. Mix and chill. I mixed in some pistachios and that was really quite lovely, even though my dough had already dried considerably when I was shaping them (which is why they look like that).
This pairs with cardamon, coriander, rose and molasses (which I could work into the syrup).
Ideas
- One idea might be to assemble the green layer post-baking to keep it nice and bright.