Dagon Street

In the last day or so I have gone through a pound or so of phyllo dough. For those of you who have never dealt with this stuff, it is a sheet pastry that is paper thin. Imagine a sheet of typing paper made from pie crust. If you look at this stuff funny it breaks or tears. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to use than trying to make puff pastry dough, or anything else that will crust up and flake the way phyllo will.

So, I made a half recipe of Baklava and a Morrocan dish called B’stilla Bhedren (sp). Below are pictures of both, but I’m only posting the recipe for the Baklava as the B’stilla came from the book Cooking at the Casbah.

Phyllo dough was a bit of a bother to work with because the sheets were fairly temperamental and would crack or tear on a whim. Butter is brushed between each layer of phyllo and the subsequent layer of phyllo really liked to latch onto that butter, so failure to drop the dough right where it needed to be meant further danger of scooting things around and tearing. On the bright side, most things involving phyllo dough use lots of layers (Baklava starts with ten), which means a little tear isn’t a big deal as long as you orient the next piece so no other tears line up. While that may sound like a bit of a dodge, really no one will no if some of the dough is a little cracked, as long as the top piece looks good. The whole point behind all of these layers of this incredibly thin dough is to create a crunchy, flaky crust, so the first time someone inserts a fork or knife the stuff shatters, hiding any evidence of a dodgy layer of dough.

One big piece of baklava

Not Quite Baklava

2 oz Macadamia nuts

6 oz pecans

Confectioners sugar

7 sheets phyllo dough

honey

Lemon juice

cinnamon stick

Melted butter

I’ve been sitting on this post for probably a month. I keep forgetting to put in the instructions for how to make it. I think I’m not particularly inclined because I discovered I don’t really like baklava. I’ll get the instructions up at some point, I’m sure.

B'Stilla: Kind of like a sweet chicken pot pie

The Chicken B’stilla was really quite tasty. The chicken and turmeric flavors really played well off of each other. I would post the recipe and how to make this, but that seems a little rude since I pulled it straight our of Kitty Morse’s cookbook.

And as an FYI if you are going to garnish with 10X sugar, sift it first, otherwise it looks just like my picture.