Foods From Around the World: Baklava

Welcome to Foods From Around the World, a bi-weekly blog post focusing on a different country’s or culture’s food each time. I’ll be posting pictures and recipes, and if I’m adventurous, may be trying some of the recipes at home and sharing my experience with you. Today’s post comes to you from Turkey! We’ll be talking about baklava!
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What could possibly be better than baklava? Ummm, easy. Chocolate baklava.
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Baklava, a classically Turkish dessert, comes in many shapes, sizes, and flavors. After spending last Fall semester in Istanbul, Turkey, I had tasted many of them. However, I was a little nervous about how sweet the chocolate baklava would be. Original pistachio or walnut baklava is already one of the sweetest desserts imaginable – phyllo dough, butter and crushed nuts, all drenched in honey. But no! It was perfect, and actually less sweet than the traditional recipe, if possible. It was served to me with kaymak, or clotted cream, which is probably one of my absolute favorite Turkish delicacies. The kaymak also helps to counteract some of the sweetness of the pastry, creating a perfect combination of taste and texture. Awesome. Pure awesome.

I’m sure that the baklava shown above was prepared a different way, but here is a decent-looking recipe for chocolate baklava that I found online – try it at home? I might.

I had this baklava in the famous Karaköy Güllüoğlu baklava. You can check out their write-up in IstanbulEats here. If you want to sample some local baklava-goodness, I recommend checking out Manakeesh Bakery on 44th and Walnut. Or if you don’t want to walk all the way there, they do sell packages of their baklava in Fro Gro as well 🙂

-Alex Golub

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