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Joan’s Culinary Tour (Foodalogue) this week takes us to Turkey. Turkey’s charm has many faces.
Landscapes: from the great mountains of Ararat
to the giant lake Van.
Not to mention the ‘soda’ lakes as the ‘Solda Golu” and the thermal springs of Pamukkale (“cotton castle”), where the water limestone is deposited in thick layers along the mountain slopes, giving rise to a natural spectacle of an incredible visual impact. Here in the picture you can see the ‘artistic’ result of colourful algae …
Anyway, talking about Turkey makes me immediately think of Istanbul. I’ve been in Turkey once but not in Istanbul, and I’d like to visit this place. Just last Saturday I happened to listen a beautiful Turkey’ s portrait on the radio, by Marta Ottaviani, a journalist and writer living in Istanbul since 2005, both for work and by choice. If you want to hear her story click here (only Italian version).
Talking about Turkey’s scent and flavours, this week I decided to try the Baklava Rolls.
Recipe is from Hulya of Turkish Cuisine, a very interesting blog about traditional Turkish Style Cooking. I only replaced the lemmon juice with the orange blossom water. Just an addition suggested by Francesco of Chefchezvous, who recently cooked a delicious Baklava!
The result is a truly new flavour for me.
For Baklava Rolls you need:
1 package phyllo dough – 2 Cups chopped natural pistachios – 2 Cups sugar – 1 stick melted butter – 1 cup water – 2 tbsp orange flower water
Start preparing the syrup, putting water and sugar in a pan. Boil and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Turn the heat off, add the orange blossom water and let it cool.
Meanwhile, take 6 sheets of phyllo dough, brush every sheet with melted butter and overlap them one by one: you’ll have a 6 sheets’ rectangle.
Put 2 tbsp of chopped pistachios along the rectangle’s long edge and start wrinkling the dough with your hands. Continue adding chopped pistachios while wrinkling. When you finish with all sheets, you can cut the ‘big rolls’ into smaller pieces like finger long.
Brush their top with melted butter as well and place them all in a pan. Bake it into 350 F pre-heated oven until golden brown.
After you remove from oven, let them cool to room temperature before pouring syrup over them slowly.
A little experiment: I do not like much butter, so I used olive oil for my rolls’ ‘second round’. They were excellent in my opinion (very modest!). You just have to leave the rolls stay in the syrup for a while once they are cooked and let them soak (just to eliminate the olive oil taste). This different process makes them tasty and fluffy!
Hope my dish looks ‘Turkish just a little bit…afiyet olsun!!!
The photo of the algae is unbelievable. What a magnificent sight!
Thanks for continuing the tour with us and for bringing such a delicious looking treat. I really like baklava.
Joan, thanks for compliments and to be the leader of the Culinary Tour. I’m enjoying virtual traveling with you and the other bloggers!
Seeing another post about Turkey is great! The photos you share are amazing! especially the pgoto of Soda Golu is so impressive! As for your baklava, it looks like the ones we have here, so much like Turkish! Adding orange blossom water instead of lemon sounds so intriguing. Bet it gives a very nice flavor. You made me crave for some!
Ciao Zerrin, thanks! The original recipe is with lemon? I thought it was with orange blossom water! Sure to meet you again, I’ll visit you often as your blog and your recipes inspires me so much! 🙂
Excellent dish, excellent photo and yes, looks definitely Turkish.
I have been to Pamukkale, I can still smell the sulphur 🙂 grazie per mi fare rammentare.
I was not brave enough to try making baklava (I like the orange blossom water addition idea) but you’ve made me want to make some now. Love the background about Turkey and that amazing photograph of the coloured rock.
@Torwen: Grazieeee!! I’m just going to visit your recipe! hope to read also something about Pammukkale..did you talk about your trip there? Must be fashinating…is it really like the photos we shared?
@Sally: you ARE brave enough! And more! I saw your dishes..don’t be modest! Baklava are really simple to prepare. Maybe the challenge is to make the phyllo dough by ourselves. I used dough ready-made!Orange blossom is an idea of Francesco, the blogger I mentioned in my post. I thought the original recipe was with orange blossom water (while googling, I saw more and more recipes like this!) but I found out from Zerrin and Hayla (both Turkish) that they used lemon.
SEE YOU ALL IN JAPAN!
Hi Acky,
I posted some (really ugly) photos on my blog. I didn’t remember algae colouring the terraces but it was still very impressive. I hope you can visit some day. I really want to go there again and all the food ….
It was a nice culinary stop-over wasn’t it?
Baccio, Torwen
Hi! I alredy went to visit your blog and I saw your photos, not so bad!! 🙂 great soup recipe! Yes, nice trip, I felt more confident with turkish recipes than Alaskan..! See you next we in Japan! Bye
I love the baklava – it looks dleicious. Thanks for you comment on my blog. I wanted to let you know that ‘Mezze’ is the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean version of Antipasti – small finger foods.
Hi Oz! Pleasure to see you here, thanks for your clarification, now I ‘get’ it!
amazing pictures!!!
thanks a lot for sharing, and may I have a little baklava?
have a nice week!
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