The BFD Food Column: Knafeh (Middle Eastern Sweet Cheese Pastry) & Sable Breton (French Butter Cookies)

Having been a Chef and owner of two Italian restaurants in Israel, one in Jerusalem and the other near Ceasarea, also having graduated in Baking and Pastry from the Tadmor Hotel and Culinary Institute in Herzaliya, Israel, I have discovered that Baking, Pastries and Pasta have always been more of a passion to me. Not intending to detract from slapping fish, meat and veggies in the oven or on the Grill, which is a savoury journey all in itself, it’s just that the chemistry and exactness in baking and pastry has always been more of a challenge and when you get the result you wanted a tad more rewarding than mixing flavours and textures in savoury cooking. 

So I am going to continue in my diversion for a wee bit into the SWEET side of life.

Here in my part of the Mediterranean, there is no end to sweet recipes (sweets are handed out at every happy occasion like weddings, births, circumcisions or hearing the news of a particularly successful terror attack), most of them are a little too sweet for my liking often dripping and oozing in liquified sugar, there are however some, a few, worth trying.

Knafeh one of my favourites is made with Ricotta, Kadaif (hairs of flour) and melted butter; it is a delicacy that one can’t just pass by. Of course in its traditional form it is doused in a heavy hand of sugar syrup flavoured with rose water which seems to permeate everything sweet in this neck of the woods and a flavour I find distasteful.

Further most commercial and Restaurant Knafeh has the Kadaif coloured orange with food colouring to act as a contrast to the green of the Pistachio topping. I prefer O natural over food colourants.

This version of Knafeh was shared by a talented young Chef by the name of Montaser Ha Halasy from Jabel Mukaber in Eastern Jerusalem, who I had the privilege to work with for several months at the Orient Hotel.

To make one 20 cm frypan size of Knafeh

Ingredients:

300 gram fresh Ricotta

150 gram from a supermarket frozen packet of Kadaif (Im not sure in NZ that you will find Kadaif outside of “specialty” stores in Mt Roskill Mt Albert areas of Auckland).

150 gram pack melted butter

Zest of one lemon

Handful of finely chopped toasted pistachio nuts

For sugar syrup

200 gram sugar and

100 gram water dissolved and combined.  

Method:

Defrost then separate the Kadaif hairs in a bowl. Melt then cool butter, ensuring it remains liquid,  add the butter bit by bit to the kadaif ensuring that the kadaif is  mixed through with the butter. Take enough Kadaif to form a base and compress down with your fingers.  Then mix in the lemon zest with the Ricotta cheese, add the Ricotta and compress down ensuring you have at least a  1 centimetre thickness of cheese. Then add a top layer of kadaif on top of the Ricotta ensuring a descent thickness is obtained. 

Put the frypan with the Knafeh on the gas top on a medium to low heat, until slightly browned and crispy but not burnt, turn over and do the other side using a second preheated frypan for flipping, have your sugar syrup handy and drizzle over the top, sprinkle the pistachio before serving. Best served warm. Simple, but a real treat.

Sable Breton (the sands of Breton) this one doesn’t pass like sand through an hour glass.

This biscuit is one of the simplest yet most delicate and tasty biscuits around. It hails from the French Atlantic coast of Brittany and somehow made it all the way here to the shelves of the Patisseries in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ingredients:

Regular Flour 300

White sugar 200

Baking Powder 5 gram

Coarse Atlantic Sea Salt 6 gram

Zest 1 lemon

Butter cubed 230 gram

80 gram egg yolk

Method:

All the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl including the lemon Zest. Using the Paddle attachment mix well for a minute then add the cubed butter and mix until the mixture  starts to appear like coarse sand. Add the egg yolks in one go and very quickly it will form into a soft but firm dough. Stop, ensure you don’t over mix, as soon as it becomes one remove make into a small rectangular block, wrap in cling wrap and leave in the fridge for an hour or more.

Remove from fridge halve, lightly dust the counter top in flour and your hands and gently roll out into a tube about 5 cm thick. To get the perfectly round tube use a thin baking tray to roll it out, remember to always dust the roll with flour to ensure it doesn’t stick to anything. Once thickness and roundness is obtained place on tray in Freezer leave until frozen. When you wish to make your biscuits remove from the freezer and let thaw for 5 minutes, cut 3/4 centre meter slices place on baking paper with enough space between biscuits as these will expand. Bake for 12-14 minutes at 180 C, leave to cool completely in place on the tray before packing in a sealable box.

These are YUM. You just can’t stop eating them.

Next week back to Savoury. Chicken Shawarma, something so tasty that Princes and their emissaries request it at their official banquets.

Li’ hetraot (Hebrew for see you later)