Baklava with Pistachios, Walnuts and Honey Syrup

There are certain classic sweets that are universally adored and I think baklava is one of them…well judging from the reactions that I get from people when I tell them I made baklava. But what’s not to like about baklava? Layers of buttered filo pastry, sandwiching a spiced nut mixed and bathed in an aromatic honey syrup – it's a crunchy, sweet and decadent, and also moreish, where one piece is never enough.

I find baklava one of the easiest sweets to make but it’s just a little labourous as you have to layer in sheets of filo pastry and brush some butter between each layer.

I recently made baklava for the first time and everyone who ate it told me it was the best baklava that they had ever eaten (this is not an exaggeration). I adapted a baklava recipe from the Gourmet Traveller. The GT recipe had 500g of filo pastry but when I went to the supermarket I found that the filo pastry came in 375g packets, so I amended the recipe by reducing everything by a third and also added in some other spices (cardamon and nutmeg) to the nut mix.

I find that baklava can be really sweet so when making the honey syrup, taste and balance out the sweetness with the acidity of lemon juice to your desired taste.

Enjoy!

Ingredients
•    150g pistachios
•    150g walnuts
•    50g caster sugar
•    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
•    ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
•    ¼ teaspoon ground cardamon
•    200g butter, coarsely chopped
•    375g filo pastry
Honey syrup
•    200g caster sugar
•    80g honey
•    1 lemon, grated rind and juice only (juice added to taste)
•    200ml water
•    ½ cinnamon quill
•    few drops rosewater and/or orange blossom water to taste

Optional: Extra chopped pistachios for sprinkling over the top of baklava.

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.

Spread the nuts on a baking tray and lightly toast in the oven for 5-8 minutes or until aromatic (toast the pistachios and walnuts on separate trays). Cool.

Combine the pistachios, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and caradmon in the bowl of a food processor and process a few times using the pulse button on the food processor. Then add the walnuts and continue pulsing until the nuts are coarsely chopped but not ground. (I processed the pistachios first for a bit before adding in the walnuts as the walnuts crumble more and I found that if I processed the pistachios and walnuts at the same time the walnuts became more ground before pistachios were fully chopped) Set aside the nut mixture.

Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat, set aside and keep warm. Brush a 3cm-deep, 8x8inch square baking tray with butter. Cut filo sheets to fit tray snugly and cover with a damp tea towel (this prevents the sheets from drying out).

Layer one-third of the filo pastry in tray, brushing butter between each layer. Scatter evenly with half the nut mixture, then top with half the remaining pastry, brushing butter between each layer. Scatter over remaining nuts, top with remaining filo, brushing between each layer with butter. Lightly brush the top with remaining butter.
  

Refrigerate until firm (around 15 minutes so that it is easier to score), then cut through all pastry layers into 4cm diamonds with a sharp knife. Bake until golden and cooked through (45 minutes-1 hour). Cover loosely with foil partway through cooking if top browns too quickly.

While the baklava is baking, make the honey syrup - combine sugar, honey, lemon rind, cinnamon quill and 200ml water in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Reduce heat to low, simmer until infused (20 minutes). Remove from heat, strain through a fine sieve, stir through lemon juice and rosewater/orange blossom water to taste and set aside.

Cool baklava slightly (2-3 minutes), pour over syrup evenly, set aside at room temperature to cool completely (overnight if possible). Baklava will keep in tray, covered, for 3-4 days.

Optional: Sprinkle the top of the baklava with extra chopped pistachios.

[Update 31 January 2012 - Recipe featured on Yummly - Pistachio Recipes to Go Nuts For]

Banh Cuon with Prawns and Vegetables (Vietnamese Rice Rolls)

Snapshot of Hoi An, Vietnam

 

 

Delicious Vietnam is a monthly food blogging event which was founded by Anh (A food lover’s journey) and Hong & Kim (Ravenous Couple) with the aim promoting and exploring the diversity of Vietnamese cuisine. I have been following this event for some time now and after two years Anh has decided that the next edition will be the last with entries to be submitted by 31 December 2011 (so if you would like to contribute, you still can!). I have always wanted to participate in Delicious Vietnam and I am a bit sad that it’s all coming to an end but happy that I can contribute to the last one. Join the Delicious Vietnam Facebook page to share delicious Vietnamese recipes, stories and restaurant reviews with others.

This is my entry to Delicious Vietnam December 2011.
 

When you dine at Vietnamese restaurants in Perth, you get a stock standard list of Vietnamese dishes, but in Vietnam a lot of dishes are exclusive to specific regions and some stalls specialize in selling just one dish. Ho Ani was my favourite place to eat when I traveled around Vietnam in October, with an abundance of restaurants and street food stalls selling a wide variety of delicious food, I would recommend it as the top food destination in Vietnam. The local delicacies specific to Hoi An are cao lau and white rose, these two dishes are not available anywhere else in Vietnam. The noodles in cau lau are made using water from the centuries-old Ban Le well in the Quang Nam Province in town, which give the noodles a unique taste and I loved their firm chewy texture (similar to Japanese udon). White rose is a shrimp dumpling made from translucent white dough bunched up to look like a rose and apparently it is only made by one family in Hoi An who supplies all the restaurants (the recipe is a family secret).
 

Cau lau noodles, bean sprouts, lettuce, herbs, thin slices of pork, 

crackling squares with a bit of rich meat broth.

White rose - the most delicious dumpling that I ate in Vietnam.

Cau lau and white rose were a highlight of my eating endeavours in Hoi An (and all of Vietnam) but sadly I can never fully replicate these dishes at home. A dish that I ate in Hoi An which was revolutionary for me was banh cuon, as it changed the way that I thought this dish could be made.

(Eating Place 62, Hoi An. Note: Women in Vietnam wear their pyjamas out!)

Nicola and I met up with some friends from Perth in Hoi An who also happened to be there at the same time we were. They recommended we have dinner at an outdoor eating area – Bai Boi Dong Hiep, Eating Place 62 that they ate at the night before. Deciding what to eat can be a difficult task when there is so much on offer but when I saw banh cuon on the menu I knew what I wanted to order. I was interested in trying dishes that I could have back home in Perth to see what it was like in the country of origin. This was the first time that I had ordered banh cuon on our Vietnam trip. Banh cuon is one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes. It’s a thin crepe like rice roll, filled with a mixture of ground pork and minced wood ear mushrooms. It’s freshly made and should be eaten straight away. I love the lightness of the rice rolls and the delicious pork filling topped with herbs and nuoc cham. It looks simple but is packed with flavour. Banh cuon is traditionally cooked by steaming over a fabric covered pot of boiling water which produces a delicate and thin rice crepe.
 

 

 [Here’s a video that I found on youtube of banh cuon being 

made the traditional way – steamed on a pot]

Also check out a detailed banh cuon recipe and photos from The Ravenous Couple.
 

(Spotted - lady making banh cuon in Danang Supermarket)

Banh Cuon is something that my mum would often cook for lunch on a Sunday. However, she uses a non-stick frying pan to cook the banh cook instead of the traditional method as it’s easier. The rice rolls are not as light and delicate as the ones produced by steaming but the results are satisfactory.

When the plate of banh cuon that I had ordered at Eating Place 62 was placed in front of me I was a bit puzzled as it wasn’t what I expected. The banh cuon didn’t contain the usual ground pork, minced wood ear mushroom, and onions mixture. The banh cuon was filled with prawns and vegetables. 

(Banh cuon dish from Eating Place 62, Hoi An)

I have never seen banh cuon served like this before, but it didn’t matter as it tasted delicious and I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of putting other fillings in banh cuon before. The filling of prawns and vegetables made the banh cuon a much lighter and refreshing dish. Vegetarians could adjust the filling for banh cuon with some grilled tofu and vegetables. Banh cuon is also enjoyed plain with no fillings and just topped with some fried shallots, herbs and served with nuoc cham.
 

Banh Cuon with Prawns and Vegetables

Ingredients

Rice roll batter
•    200g rice flour
•    100g tapioca starch
•    ½ teaspoon salt
•    800ml warm water
Filling
•    cooked prawns
•    bean sprouts
•    carrot, grated
•    chives, chopped into 2-3 inch lengths
 

Garnish with fried shallots, coriander and serve with nuoc cham (for a recipe for nuoc cham, see my Vietnamese chicken salad recipe)

(The rice flour and tapioca starch that I used)

 Method

Put the rice flour, tapioca starch and salt together in a bowl, then slowly pour in the warm water and whisk together until smooth and well blended, it should have a watery consistency and resemble milk. 

Heat a large non-stick frying pan and lightly grease the pan with vegetable oil. Spoon one ladle of batter into the pan – one hand is used to pour the mixture in fast, while the other hand is used to swirl/revolve the pan quickly to spread the batter around the pan evenly and coat the bottom. Cover the pan and let the batter sit undisturbed for around 30 seconds to cook through, it should become transparent. The batter is ready when the edges start to release (don’t worry if you see bubbles forming or little holes). 

Scatter some prawns, bean sprouts, carrot and chives onto the batter and quickly roll the crepe into a log with a spatula while it is in the pan.

Slide the rolled banh cuon onto a plate, garnish with some fried onion, coriander and serve with nuoc cham.
 

Notes:
•    You can remove the rice crepe from the pan onto an oiled plate and then add in the fillings and roll, but I find it quicker to just do it all at once in the pan.
•    You need to work quickly and don’t overcook the batter as it should be smooth in texture and kind of resemble something that is steamed.

Related post
The other Vietnamese crepe – Banh Xeo.

Edamame, bacon and mint salad

 (Photo of edamame beans that I had at an izakaya in Japan last year)

Edamame beans are something that I always order when I go to a Japanese restaurant. It’s a tasty appetiser and a perfect accompaniment to beer. I enjoy squeezing the beans out of the pod to eat them.

I thought edamame beans only existed in Japanese restaurants, that the only way I could consume them was at a Japanese restaurant.

But then one day I found out that I can get them in frozen form and I could enjoy edamame beans in the comfort of my own home, whenever I wanted. 

Here’s the story about how I discovered the existence of frozen edamame beans.

In October I went to ‘Cinema in a Cave’ at McNess Studios (an artist run studio and project space located in a repurposed building at 8 Pier Street in the city). Cinema in a Cave is a monthly microcinema, screening rare and underappreciated films from around the world organised by Kenta. This was the last Cinema in a Cave session for the year and the movie been shown was The Taste of Tea.

The Taste of Tea takes you on a journey into the lives of the Haruno family – a young girl that sees a giant double of herself everywhere, a teenage boy facing girl and puberty troubles, not your average housewife who works on animated film projects, hypnotist husband, an uncle who is a music producer and trying to find meaning in life, and kooky grandfather – yes, this film has it all! It’s a surreal, funny, imaginative and touching movie. I loved the way that it captured the eccentricities of human behavior.  

Check out the trailor – doesn’t it make you smile?

So as it was the last Cinema in a Cave session for the year, Kenta had all these snacks leftover that he had bought in bulk for movie munchies. Kenta was going to Japan so he had to get rid of all these snacks and gave them away. A bag of frozen edamame beans was given to me and I was like OMG, these beans come frozen?! This was a life changing discovery. I wondered why I have never known this before…am I the only one that didn’t know that edamame beans were available frozen?

I recently used edamame beans to make a simple salad, just adding in whatever I had at hand and the result was pretty good.

This is what I did.

Cook frozen edamame beans according to packet instructions, then I shelled all the beans and put them in a bowl. When you eat edamame beans at Japanese restaurants, they come slightly salted. To add this element of saltiness to the now naked edamame beans, I fried little bits of chopped up bacon in a frying pan, then transferred the bacon onto a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the excess oil. I added the fried bacon to the edamame beans. For a bit of bite and sweetness to the salad, I finely chopped up some red onion and added them in. A salad would not be complete without some herbs so I added in little bits of shredded mint. To complete the salad, I drizzled over the top the finest extra virgin olive oil that I could find in my cupboard (3 Drops).

 (Little fried bits of bacon)

Luang Prabang

After spending much of our time recovering from food poisoning in Ayutthaya, we were really looking forward to the next destination on our trip – Luang Prabang. We had friends who had travelled to Luang Prabang about 4 years ago and we were promised some sort of untouched paradise, the least developed of all the South East Asia places you could visit.

But we were a little disappointed with our first impressions of Luang Prabang. It was very apparent that it was becoming a tourist city. There has been much development with guesthouses popping up everywhere, tourist agencies, shops selling local handicrafts at tourist prices, cafes and bars catered to Westerners (we even came across an Aussie sports bar which showed the footy finals!). At every corner there was a tuk tuk driver offering “waterfall…waterfall…I take you to waterfall?” The US dollar is commonly used in place of the local currency which is the Lao kip. 

 Luang Prabang Airport

This is what the current Luang Prabang airport looks like. It’s tiny! Their planes (Lao Airlines) are also small and their equivalent of a life jacket is your seat. But all this is about to change…our guesthouse owner told us that Luang Prabang was building a new airport and will soon be able to accept flights directly from Singapore (currently you can get to Luang Prabang via Thailand or Vietnam). 

I still enjoyed my time in Luang Prabang but it took a little bit of time to accept the reality of the situation. Luang Prabang still has a certain charm to it - it’s a place where you can ride around freely on a bicycle on uncongested roads, you will see the local Lao kids running around and playing in the street, and nestled between the Mekong and Khan rivers, it is extremely picturesque. 

Your firsts of anything is always a significant affair – your first day at school, first time you ride a bike, first date, first kiss, first time you get drunk, first time you win an award for anything. When you are travelling, you experience many firsts – your first tuk tuk ride, your first attempt to cross the road in unregulated traffic, your first squat toilet, your first go at haggling with a street vendor…I think that one of the most important firsts is your first meal at a place. Seems like a typical response coming from a food blogger right? But after arriving at your destination, all that travelling, walking, sweating, overcoming communication barriers, finding the right hotel, checking in etc. – you are going to be damn hungry and at a point where you are not too fussed about what you eat as you have days ahead to explore the food. But you know what they say about first impressions, so finding a relatively decent first meal is important and some sort of achievement.

As far as first meals go, the first thing that I ate at Luang Prabang was probably my favourite first meal. We walked along the main street to find somewhere, anywhere to eat and saw this little noodle place with people inside slurping away. I always find any kind of noodle soup a safe bet – a flavoursome stock with noodles and fresh herbs, there may be varying degrees in flavour but you can always trust that it will provide a comforting and hearty meal, especially around South East Asia where noodle soups are a staple.

This is feu, a Lao noodle soup dish which is similar to a Vietnamese pho

I can’t recall what this noodle place was called but it is located on Ban Pakham Sisavong road (a few stores down from Ancient Luang Prabang Hotel/Café)

In Luang Prabang we found it hard to find little local eateries that sold traditional Lao cuisine, the places that we ended up going to where tailored for Westerners but appeared to do a decent job of representing Lao cuisine.

One night we ate at Tamarind which is known as one of ‘the’ places to go to for an introduction to authentic Lao cuisine. It specialises in Lao tasting platters and also offers cooking classes. The menu contained a lot of explanatory information on Lao cuisine and as the waiters brought out each dish they would describe what it was and how to eat it.

We ordered the tasting plate, grilled pork, steamed fish and bamboo soup. 

Tasting Plate

Grilled Pork

 Bamboo soup

At Tamarind, it was the first time that I ate dinner with my hands. The staple food of Laos is sticky rice eaten by hand, you pick up a bit of rice from the bamboo basket and roll it into a ball, and use it to dip into the dishes of condiments and to pick up other ingredients on the table. Eating with your hands seems to be acceptable only if you are a child and have insufficient skills to manage cutlery but in Laos it’s proper dining etiquette. Eating with my hands did bring out the child in me though as I made a snowman with my food.

We checked out the Traditional Arts the Ethnology Centre, an independent non-profit museum. It’s a small space but great to visit if you want to get a feel for traditional Lao culture. It was very interesting to see all the traditional costumes and handicrafts of the different ethnic communities within Laos and learn about their lifestyles, especially the customs for courtship and marriage, where a woman’s weaving was a symbol of her marriage potential. We loved the museum shop which had a huge range of fair trade products and souvenirs hand made by different ethnic groups Lao. 

 Pom pom necklace that I bought from the 

Traditional Arts the Ethnology Centre museum shop

Outside the Traditional Arts the Ethnology Centre was Le Patio Café which served cuisine from different Lao ethnic communities. I ordered a dish from the Hmong people – a pork belly and leafy green stew. Out in the rural areas, meat would be expensive and I thought that this dish exemplified how meat is used sparingly to make a hearty dish, where the amount of pork in the dish was minimal but had been cooked until it was fall apart tender and full of flavour with a large amount of mustard greens. 

We visited the Ock Top Pop Living Craft Centre which is a traditional weaving centre and learnt about the process for creating silk and watched the women at their workstations hand weaving garments. It was an intricate and labour intensive process and we were told that one day’s work produced only 20cm of a scarf, so completing a whole scarf would take a few days. 

 

Hanging silk

Woman weaving

At the Ock Top Pop Centre we had lunch at the on site Silk Road Café which served traditional Lao cuisine. I ordered a Lao style chicken salad and a traditional Lao sour fish soup.

The Silk Road Café is situated on the banks of the Mekong so you get 

a lovely view while you eat.

One of my favourite cocktails to order while I was travelling around South East Asia was a mojito as the local mint used in this drink took it to another level. It was especially refreshing for the tropical weather we were travelling in. A great little bar to have a mojito in Luang Prabang is Icon Klub. 

Wondering around town we spotted the local market were people buy all their groceries.

Here’s all the meat, packaged and ready to go.

The freshest fish you can get, it’s still alive.

The variety of the greens available was amazing. 

A trip to Luang Prabang would not be complete without an elephant ride and a trip to the waterfalls. It was the first time that I rode on an elephant. You have the option of sitting in a seat on its back or riding the elephant’s neck. I needed a little convincing from Nicola but I finally made the move to sit on the elephant’s neck. On its neck, the hairs prick into you and with every step you can feel the muscles moving beneath you.

Riding an elephant at the Elephant Village Sanctuary. 

Tad Sae Waterfall 

Stay tuned….our travels proceed to Vietnam next and our first stop is Hanoi.

Related posts

• Eating and Drinking around Bangkok 
• Ayutthaya. Eating Street Food.