BM # 44
International ABC Cooking
Cooking with Alphabets : T
Meal Type : Sweet
Turkey
Country
Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a contiguous transcontinental country,
When you ask a Turk what to eat as a Turkish dessert, baklava is the most common answer. Turks love sweets and baklava is a fine example of this. The description of baklava is simple: chopped nuts are spread in between the phyllo (yufka) layers, dressed with butter, baked and sweetened with syrup or honey.
Baklava is a very old pastry, and is a rich, sweet pastry .Now most of us are familiar with the common square Baklava, but we have many more varieties of this delicious dessert. Every time I have a friend coming from middle east this dessert has to come, and ever since i have been wanting to try my hands on it.
On my recent trip to Delhi I had the chance to visit Kunafa which is an out let for these Turkish sweets, and there I decided that the Bird’s Nest is going to feature on my post for the alphabet T.
The recipe of the square Baklava needs Phyllo , which is something that I do not get here. On my research I found that they use Kunaffa dough for making other versions of Baklava.Since even this was not possible to get I decided to make it from the roasted vermicelli that we get here. I knew this would be rather tricky but all the same I gave it a try.
I made a very small portion and to my surprise it turned out awesome. I guess I will have to master the shape , and should have used chopped pistachios, but somehow I was very happy with the result.
The Baklava had just the perfect sweetness , though I could have added more butter to make it more rich, but then if you get a low cal sweet to satisfy the taste buds why not. Hubby was very happy and for a change everyone relished the Bird’s Nest!! You could look for more varieties of Baklava here.
Here is how I made this ..
Bird’s Nest Baklava
100 gms fine roasted vermicelli
1 tbsp ghee/ butter
1 tsp Cardamon powder
Honey as per taste
1/2 cup shelled unsalted pistachios.
For the nest
Add 1/2 tb sp butter to a non stick pan.
Place the vermicelli and lightly roast, making sure you do not break it.
Once one side is roasted , gently flip over and roast.
Sprinkle a few drops of water,Cardamon and drizzle honey as per taste.
The vermicelli should have cooked and would now be slightly soft.
Grease muffin moulds.
Picking a handful of these vermicelli strands roll them to the size of the mould, it will resemble a mini nest.
Bake at 180 deg, for 10 minutes.
Remove , at this stage these should be mildly crisp.
Stuffing
Roast the pistachios in ghee.
Add honey and cook till the pistachios are well coated with it.
Place on the prepared nests and serve.
Some of the pics of this Sweet and the Sweet shop.
Omg, these birds nests are just damn cute and dangerously addictive, i can have few without any guilt.
Your birds nest look just fine. I think you have mastered the shaping the nest, at least in the pictures they look just fine. Vermicelli and phyllo is used a lot in Turkish desserts. I made knafeh for one of the events few months ago I substitute kadaif noodles with 1/2 phyllo and 1/2 vermicelli. It turned out just fine. It is such a relief that all three can easy substituted for the other.
A very interesting recipe and you have done a great job adapting it. It does look like a birds nest. I am assuming the sweet shop picture is from your trip?
they are surely attractive to catch anyone's eye/ you have replicated them so well..amazing work
wow, interesting and yummy recipe…superb…
The nest look so cute and so well done Vaishali..such a lovely dessert!
wow wow the vermicelli nest looks so real Like a birds nest 🙂 very interesting recipe from Turkey , looks so addictive 🙂 The nest baklava goes to do in my list !!
The nests look awesome. very cute!
That is a super cute looking Turkish dessert. I'm sure it must have tasted awesome.
Those nests look pretty cute and didn't realize it is a variation of baklava.
Wow this is awesome. I had seen Valli's and now you!!! wow you rock. They are perfect.
this is such a great vessel for sweets
Vaishali, I feel you have already mastered the art of shaping the nests! Great job and the pics are stunning…
The nest looks so cute and interesting.