(fun, upbeat music)
- (speaks in foreign language)!
Welcome to my holiday because I can't afford
to go on real vacation.
So today, we are gonna make some baklava.
It's a Mediterranean delicacy made
with layered phyllo dough and nertz
and cinnamon and sugar and honey.
It is super delicious, and I can't wait
for you to make it at home.
So first things first, I've got a pound of phyllo dough.
You can buy this frozen at the grocery store.
So this has been thawed.
We're just gonna roll it out,
and I'm gonna leave this on my cutting board.
And to make sure that this doesn't get dried out,
I'm gonna put a damp towel over the top.
This gets dry really quickly, and if it gets too dry,
it will get super brittle and then you won't be able
to work with it, and then dessert will be ruined.
The next thing we're gonna do,
we're gonna make our cinnamon sugar mix.
So I've got some regular old granulated sugar,
clove, and cinnamon.
So the origins of baklava are quite debated.
We know that this is a dessert that
was basically all over the Mediterranean area.
The earliest that we think this recipe may have been created
is actually back in the eighth century BC
by the ancient Assyrians.
And then it traveled all over what used
to be the Ottoman Empire, and we know that it
was perfected in the palace of the Ottoman Empire
by the chefs there sometime in the 15th century.
So this is a very old dessert,
but there's no reason to change it 'cause it's delicious.
And so the versions that you see today
are pretty similar to how it's been made for centuries.
We've got our cinnamon sugar mix.
Now we are gonna mix together our nuts.
So we've got some finely ground pistachios and some walnuts.
You'll see this in all kinds of different versions of this
that use different kinds of nuts.
Some people use almonds, some people only use walnuts,
some people only use pistachios.
We're gon' mix it up, okay?
That's how I feel about that.
Okay, so now that I've got my cinnamon sugar ready
and I've got my nuts all mixed together,
now it's time to start buttering some stuff.
There is so much butter in this dessert, so much butter.
I've got just a plain old half baking sheet
with parchment down on there,
and we are just gonna butter the heck out of it.
Let's get our first sheet of phyllo.
So this is what the Greeks contributed
to baklava, this super paper-thin,
you could almost see through it, dough.
And we are just gonna layer this layer by layer.
And now we just keep going.
This is a painstaking and tedious process,
but I promise you it is worth it.
Great, guys, this is gonna be really entertaining for you.
So, because this was a luxury dish,
there's actually a saying in Turkish,
basically saying I am not rich enough
to eat baklava everyday that is a term of no,
that is too expensive, I couldn't do that.
We're getting close, we're getting close.
So basically, I am layering about a third
of this phyllo dough, and then we're gonna sprinkle
with nuts and cinnamon sugar.
♪ La da da da da da ♪
So we know the cinnamon and the cloves
was the contribution of the Armenians
because they were merchants on the silk and spice trade,
so that's what they contributed to this recipe.
Tore that one.
It's fine, everything's fine.
It's the tagline for the show.
It's fine, everything's fine.
I'm gonna say this is a third of the phyllo dough,
so, now that we're there, now it's time to add
in our first layer of deliciousness.
So I'm gonna take our cinnamon, sugar, and clove mixture
and sprinkle about half of that over the top,
and nuts.
I'm sorry, nertz. (laughs)
Where did that come from? (chuckles)
That actually came from the other food stylist
in the building, so that's not even a me thing.
That's just what we call them in the studio.
And now I'm gonna do the exact same thing I've been doing.
Feel free to fast forward through this part
because you've already seen it.
So we're gonna layer more phyllo,
then we're gonna do more nuts and cinnamon sugar,
and then I'm gonna layer again,
so this is really thrilling stuff.
But I just wanna ask you how your lives are, you know?
♪ Put the rest of the nertz, the rest of the nertz on there ♪
♪ Ding ♪
Why am I so weird?
So now we're just gonna layer the last third of phyllo dough
over the top and then I promise you we are almost done.
Oh God, I might need more butter.
It's a butter emergency, I'm almost out!
(ding) I wonder
where this full bowl of butter came from?
Nothing to see here, folks.
I only have two layers left,
so we're really in the home stretch now.
Okay, the penultimate; this is the penultimate layer.
Vocab word of the day: penultimate.
♪ Dun dun dun dun ♪
Okay, so the last step before this goes in the oven,
we need to go ahead and score our diamond pattern on top.
So we're gonna go ahead and score
in a crosshatch pattern before we even go in.
That's gonna help us keep these from falling apart
when we do cut them the rest of the way.
Our goal is to make two-inch-size diamonds.
So we're just gonna start cutting.
And I'm basically just going
through the first layer of phyllo.
And y'all know I can't see in a straight line,
so I'm gonna do the best I can.
I'm just gon' freewheel it.
Great, so now, whoa! (laughs)
our baklava is ready to go in the oven.
This is gonna go in at a preheated oven at 375
for about 35 minutes until it's super golden brown.
It's gonna smell awesome, so in we go.
Now that our baklava is in the oven,
it is time to make this delicious honey syrup
that gets poured over the top of it.
So we're starting with a little bit of water.
Now we're just gonna add the rest of our sugar.
We're gonna use some delicious honey.
There we go.
Ooh, I really thought I was gonna have
to struggle with that for a minute,
but I hulked out, so it's fine.
Aw, yeah, you getting that?
This is about a cup of honey.
Now we gotta add a little bit of sour,
so we're gonna do the juice of one lemon.
Oh, boy, it's on my face. (laughs)
The last step, we're gonna use orange blossom water.
Orange blossom water is the contribution
of the Lebanese culture to this recipe.
This is basically a super floral note to this recipe,
so it's gonna really amp up the flavor of the nuts.
One tablespoon.
It's pretty strong, so you don't need any more than that.
So all we're gonna do now, I've just stirred this together,
we're just gonna let this come up to a boil
and then bring up the heat down a little bit,
bring it to a simmer, and we're gonna let it simmer
for the rest of the time while the baklava is baking.
See, two things at once.
♪ Gorgeous, gorgeous, golden brown, yeah ♪
Tell me that's not beautiful.
That is a beautiful dessert.
So you can tell it's a little poofed up.
Don't worry, it's gonna settle; it'll be fine.
So we've got our honey syrup, that's still warm,
we got our hot baklava.
We are just gonna pour this syrup right over the top.
(baklava sizzles)
Now comes the hardest part of this.
Now we have to wait at least four hours
or overnight before you can cut into this
because all of that honey syrup
is gonna soak into the phyllo dough and the nuts,
and it's gonna make it even better.
It's gonna be so good, but we have to wait for forever.
But not here at Smart Cookie 'cause I made one yesterday.
Boom!
♪ Doo doo doo doo ♪
We made one yesterday 'cause we're smart,
'cause we're called Smart Cookie.
All of our honey syrup has soaked into this.
I'm just gonna follow along with the score lines
that we made yesterday and go ahead
and cut this into our diamond pieces.
Moment of truth, does it come out of the pan?
Yes, it does.
Oh, yeah, look at that guy.
You can see we got all the kinds of layers in there,
flaky crunchiness on the top,
super ooey gooey honey on the bottom.
Money!
(taps serving utensil rhythmically)
Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
That's happy dance good.
The top layer is super crunchy,
and then you get all these sweet and spicy nuts,
and the honey syrup at the bottom is really delicious,
and it's super floral from that orange blossom water.
It's truly a delicacy.
It tastes really luxurious.
Somebody else was saying it smells like a fancy place,
(chuckles) and I think that's a good description.
It's really good.
I hope you had fun on today's episode.
If you did, make sure you like, share,
subscribe, comment, ring that bell, all the things.
Let me know how it goes and let me know
if you have an idea of a recipe that you'd like to see.
All right, see ya later.
(baklava crunches)
Uh oh, nuts on the floor!
Clean up aisle two.