The language of Baklava

Diana Abu-Jaber's 2015 book is an irressitibly sweet memoir.

Diana Abu-Jaber was born in Syracuse, New York, to an American mother and a Jordanian father. The Language of Baklava, her first memoir, published in 2015, won the Northwest Booksellers' Award and has been translated into many languages.
"I called my first memoir The Language of Baklava because I was fascinated by the idea of food being a form of conversation - between the cook and the eater.
I was thinking about the way my father relied on his cooking as a way of explaining himself to his American daughters. Mealtimes were also an opportunity for him to tell us stories about his childhood and homeland. When we ate his falafel, his mansaf, his baklava, he said, we were tasting our history," she says.
She recalls: "One year when I was teaching at Iowa State University; it was one of my first teaching jobs and my parents had come to visit. We made baklava, brought it to a faculty party, and my colleagues fell on it and devoured it. It was like a scene out of Like Water For Chocolate. People were saying they didn't know baklava could taste like that. One of the professors was Lebanese-American, and he kept going back for more because, he said, he didn't know when he would ever get to have that taste again."
Diana confesses being a bit of a baklava traditionalist, "I adore the special combination of walnuts, phyllo, and syrup and feel sort of discombobulated with even the mildest changes - pistachios instead of walnuts, say, or honey instead of sugar syrup. That said, I did recently have baklava with chocolate shavings mixed into the sweet walnut filling: I thought it was amazing."
Baklava: layers of phyllo pastry with walnuts, pistachio, sesame and homemade syrup served with vanilla ice cream. Each tray is a labour of love, patience and hard work. Chef Dimitris Fatisis, Mythos Kouzina & Grill, JLT shares his recipe.

Its making

Ingredients:

500gm phyllo dough
400gm butter, melted 1tbsp ground cinnamon
1tbsp ground cloves
400gm walnuts (or 200gm walnuts and 200gm almonds)
50gm bread crumbs

For syrup:

600gm granulated sugar
400ml water
60gm corn syrup
1 cinnamon stick
3 whole cloves
1 whole orange cut in half

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150°C.
2. For the syrup: place a pot over high heat and add the sugar, water, corn syrup, cinnamon stick, cloves and orange. Bring the mixture to a boil and stir. As soon as the sugar melts, remove from heat and set aside to cool completely. (The syrup needs to be cool when poured over the hot baklava. Discard the orange halves before using.)
3. For the filling: Beat the walnuts, bread crumbs, ground cinnamon and ground cloves in a food processor. Do not finely grind. Transfer to a bowl.
4. Generously brush a 35x25 cm baking pan with butter. Begin spreading the phyllo dough in the pan to create the bottom crust. Gently press down on the phyllo with your hands to spread it out nicely, all the way to the corners of the pan. Repeat the process with four sheets of phyllo dough.
5. Drizzle the phyllo with butter, do not brush butter directly onto it. (This will help the phyllo turn out much crunchier.)
6. Spread the filling
7. Use three sheets of phyllo dough to make the top crust.
8. Spread the final sheet nicely over the top, covering the whole pan. Carefully use your brush to tuck it in all around the sides of the baklava, creating a nice top layer. Add all of the remaining butter over the top - you can now brush it over the phyllo dough. Refrigerate for 20 minutes to chill.
9. When ready, remove and score the top with a sharp knife, creating diamond-shaped pieces. Do not score all the way down.
10. Bake for 2-2 ½ hours until golden and super crunchy. When the baklava is ready, remove it from oven and immediately pour the cooled syrup over it. Set it aside to soak up all of the syrup and cool. Cut into pieces and serve.

• Food and Dining
• Dubai