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Old Place, New – carb-loaded! – Soul Food |
  This is a new twist, not only on a beloved, "old" dessert but also on this cookbook. This is the first entry co-written for a contest I enter, namely the Food/Cooking prompt for "Journey Through Genres: Official Contest"  . As you can read it in the story, "Bratlava" , this dish has haunted me and clogged my brain since I watched the mentioned, fateful episode of the TV-adaptation (by German TV-station Pro7) of the podcast Bratwurst & Baklava by German / Turkish comedians, Bastian Bielendorfer and özcan Cosar. Even two rolls of yufka-dough turned bad as I tried to resist committing the culinary sacrilege!  It was almost out of my head, when I watched a re-run of mentioned episode after an especially thrilling soccer game to calm down, by chance.  And – ZACK! – there it was again, in time for the above-mentioned contest. For those who don't know, Baklava is a Turkish sweet staple. (The Greeks claim it, too, but that'd go too far now  ). It's made of thin layers of puff pastry. Common are about 20+ layers, which are each brushed with molten butter, an extra layer with a mix of nuts (pistachio, walnut most common), floured almonds, sugar and cinnamon added every 5+ layers. Then it's cut into rhombs / oblongs and baked 40-60 minutes, depending on the recipe. When it's done, you pour honey-lemon syrup on top and sprinkle with more nuts as decoration. I couldn't do a traditional Baklava as this is incompatible with the baking time of the bratwursts, which is 20-25 minutes max. Therefore, I – like my story's FMC, Laura – consulted the most popular German cooking site, Chefkoch.de, where I found a solution for "our" problem. I hope that, different from Laura's visiting bestie, Turk Hatice, and her husband, Vince, you, the reader will honor her (my) effort more.  Okay, enough foreplay... off to the kitchen!  Serves: 5 "BRATlava" & 1 BAKlava (15 pieces) Prep Time: 2 hrs BRATlava ; 1 hr BAKlava Degree of Difficulty: One tedious B– BRATlava ; tedious enough BAKlavaWE NEED 150 gr / 5.3 oz. hazel- and / or walnuts I did 50/50 100 gr / 3.5 oz. floured almonds 75 gr / 2.7 oz. chopped pistachios Dudes! Nuts for the Nut, eh? 200 gr / 7 oz. sugar 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon Ceylon, NOT Cassia as the latter contains HUGE amounts of Cumarin, which can cause liver damage when eaten too much by cinnamon lovers – like me! 250 gr / 8.8 oz. butter 450 gr / 1 lb. filo-dough Even BETTER when you get Turkish Yufka-dough, like in a deli  125 gr / 4.4 oz. honey 150 ml / 5 US fl.oz. water 1/2 lemon I can't believe I'm writing this into a baking recipe! 5 Nürnberger mini bratwursts Try to find the original (deli) or – at least – get the sausage from a real butcher.It's worth the few $ more.  WE DO 1. Roughly chop / blitz the hazelnuts, walnuts & pistachios. Melt the butter and let it cool off. 2. Mix almonds, wal-/ hazelnuts, 50 gr / 1.75 oz. pistachios with 4 tbsp sugar + cinnamon. 3. Pile up all dough sheets and place an oven-proof dish on them upside down; then cut around the dish with a sharp knife. Really sharp!  Before you might've to entangle the sheets before layering them as neatly as possible again. Also, it can be tricky that dough sheets come in different sizes + packaging sizes. It can be 20, 10 or, like in my case 7 sheets / package. But my choice is with roughly 1.5 x 1 ft./sheet so large that I could double their number! Means: 7 BIG sheets = 14 LAYERS! 4. Preheat the oven to 200°C / 390°F top-/bottom heat OR 180°C / 350°F fan/convectionand grease the dish. 5. Place the sheets/layers into the dish individually and brush each with butter. After about 5-7 layers, sprinkle 1/3 of the nut mix on top, and that again after another 5-7 layers, and once more. Top with the remaining dough sheets, brush with the remaining butter and cut the raw baklava into rhombs or – Easier! – oblongs.   6. Bake until golden-brown, about 25 minutes – and watch it! Explicitly mentioned in the recipe; probably because ovens are individual, and take longer/shortere:ExclaimR} 7. While the baklava is in the oven, make the syrup: boil honey, water and remaining sugar to a syrup, for about 10 minutes. Do it on middle => high heat, stirring continuously. Burned syrup is a real B– to clean up. Add a splash of lemon juice and let it cool off. In my case the cooking time – despite high heat – was too short, the syrup still too runny. Cooked it once more on high heat – and stirring continuously with a whisk – but yet had to put it in the fridge for a few minutes. Making syrup is a bloody science itself! 8. Remove the finished BAKlava from the oven, let it rest for about 5 minutes, then pour over the syrup and sprinkle with the remaining nuts / pistachios, and continue letting it cool off. 9. BRAT-lava For the bites with the bratwursts I had to do it differently I procceded the same as with the BAKlava, BUT: I cut the remains of the dough sheets for the BAKlava into about 5 cm / 2 in squares for these. In the middle layer I used a little less nut mix and added the mini Nürnbergers there. Also prick the sausages 2-3 times with a fork, 'cause otherwise they might explode! DON'T wanna clean out that oven, for sure!  =>  =>  Due to the "mininess" of the Nürnbergers, those indeed took roughly 20+ minutes in the oven. When something remains: – the BAKlava keeps fresh in an airtight container / cookie tin for up to 2 weeks. – the BRATlava should be eaten quicker because of the "special" ingredient and be kept in the fridge, obviously – BTW, it also tastes yummy at room temperature (my biggest worry was it wouldn't).So, when – after recovering from the shock – you dare...  Guten Hunger!     |
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