ALBANIAN BAKLLAVA

Albanian Team

Bakllava is the Middle Eastern dessert par excellence, but it’s also part of Balkan traditions.
We chose this sweet because it is good, it is often cooked for religious parties.One day, a Ramadam’s day, my friends Abdyl, Adrian and I went to have lunch at an Albanian’s post which makes pizzas, kebabs and other traditional things from Albania. After eating, we decided to take a slice of bakllava, and we really liked it, for this reason we decided to choose this sweet, also because it is a traditional dessert in Albania.
The Baklava is a layered sweet of thin phyllo dough, just like leaves or sheets of paper, grated and leaned in a pan: chopped nuts
together with pistachios, are scattered over the various layers, which are then rolled and baked in the oven before being soaked with a solution of sugar and lemon juice or honey and spices with water.

Ingredients

- 500 gr phyllo dough
- 200 gr chopped nuts
- 150 gr crushed pistachios

- cinnamon powder
- 180 gr melted butter

Ingredients for the syrup
- 50 gr honey
- 450 gr sugar
- 300 ml water
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preparation
1-Prepare the syrup making it melt on the fire with water, honey and lemon juice. After a few minutes of cooking you will see that it becomes dense: take it out of the fire and cool it in the fridge.

2-Divide the dough into at least 12 parts and roll with the help of a rolling pin so that you get 12 thin sheets that you will lay in a rectangular.

3-Paint the first pie with melted butter and lay on top of another 5 sheets that will squeeze each with butter. On these first 6 layers sprinkle the crushed nuts and pistachios not too big; finish with powdered cinnamon powder. Cover everything with the other 6 sheets that will be scrubbed each, including the surface of the last, with the remaining butter.

4-Take a knife and cut the dough until it touches the bottom of the pan, diagonally in both directions to get rhombuses.

5-Bake at 180º for about 40 minutes until the dough is cooked well and is golden.

6-Take the baklava from the oven and pour over it the hot syrup.

GLOSSARY
phyllo dough: pasta of Greek origin made from flour, water, corn starch and sale, made of thin layers, of a consistency similar to that of a leaf, used in the kitchen for sweet and salty preparations.
syrup: a solution of sugar dissolved in water and often flavoured with fruit juice. It is used for sweetening fruit, etc.
cinnamon powder: a sweet-smelling spice made from the inner bark of Asian trees.

...That unforgettable taste!

Several years ago I ate a special sweet on my favourite day: Christmas.

I still remember the unforgettable taste of that sweet called Bakllava!

The Bakllava was in the center of the table. Its golden color made me drool. That sweet always makes me think of my homecountry: Kosovo!
The Bakllava was hot, but I blow it over and put it in my mouth. It was delicious. I could feel my mother’s love at every single bite I had. It was not the first time I ate Bakllava but that one had something that made it unique and unforgettable.

INGREDIENTS

400g phyllo dough
300g walnuts
200g butter
200g sugar
300ml water
4 eggs

PREPARATION

Melt the butter in a pan and allow it to cool. Butter the pan then put a first layer of phyllo dough mixed with sugar, start brushing with melted butter and egg and put it over a second and a third layer always buttering them. After the third layer put the walnuts and restart the process. Every three sheets of phyllo dough insert a layer of walnuts until the phyllo dough begins. 

Bake at 180° for 30 minutes. Meanwhile prepare the syrup with sugar and water (at medium heat and mix constantly). Once cooked, pour the syrup on the Bakllava, let it cool down and cut into small rhomboids... and enjoy!

GLOSSARY
Bakllava: traditional Kosovan sweet;
Sweet: having a taste similar to that of sugar, not bitter or salty;
Pan: a metal container that is round, used for cooking things on top of a cooker;
Phyllo doughy: flaky, tissue-thin layers of pastry used in backed dessert and for appetizers;
Mix: to combine so that the result cannot easily be separated into its parts;
Sugar: a sweet substance especially from the plants sugar cane, used to make food and drinks sweeter;
Butter: a pale yellow solid food containing a lot of fat that is made from cream;
Egg: the oval object with a hard shell that is produced by female birds, especially chickens, eaten as food;
Walnuts: a nut with a slightly bitter taste and a series of folds in and a hard shell;
Syrup: very sweet, thick liquid;
Rhomboids: a type of flat shape with four sides in which the sides next to each other are not of equal length but the side  opposite each other are;
Drool: to allow saliva (liquid in the mouth) to flow out of your mouth;
Blow it over: when an argument blows over, it becomes gradually less important until it ends and is forgotten;
Pour: to make a substance flow from a container, especially into another container, by raising just one side of the container that the substance is in.

HOMESICKNESS

Lifestyle 

The Mars Cake is a tasty and crispy dessert. It is very easy to prepare, but generally the recipe is interpreted at pleasure by the chef with the addition of creative ingredients, sometimes not included in the original recipe. Definitely the purists of the kitchen will turn up their nose hearing a recipe of a cake made with Mars (junk food), but I think that every sweet contains at least one unhealthy ingredient and that is not the use of junk food in itself to define our health, but how much of it we consume!
I personally know a special recipe that one of my dearest friend has kindly given to me: we cooked it together last summer and during the preparation she confided to me that this dessert always reminds her of her childhood and her holidays in Tunisia, when her grandfather prepared it with much care and passion for her and her sister. He died four years ago and whenever she misses him, she makes the Mars Cake to feel a little better. Obviously there is a secret ingredient that he has handed down to her granddaughter and that unfortunately we can not reveal …

Ingredients:

· 200 grams of puffed rice
· One confection of Mars
· Chocolate
· 80 gram of butter.

Preparation:
1. Butter the pie;
2. Slice to pieces the Mars;
3. Melt the butter with the chocolate in a pot, if you want you can use the microwave oven;
4. Put the puffed rice in the baking tray with the chocolate;
5. Put everything in the baking tray in the fridge for two hours;
6. Remove from the fridge your cake and taste it!

Glossary
Crispy: something that is thin, dry, and breakable
Slice: to cut some objects
Pieces: it is a portion of the food, a portion of something larger
Melt: to reduce something from a solid to a liquid state.
Pot: it is a container used in cooking
Baking tray: it is kitchen utensil made of metal used for cooking cookies or biscuits in the oven