You want out-of-this-world baklava?
Don’t go looking for it in Greektown. A private kitchen on Washington Boulevard in Pigtown has the best baklava in Baltimore.
1 package of filo dough
1 baking sheet measuring 17.5-by-2.5-by-1.5 inches
4 sticks unsalted butter — melted
For the nut filling: 5 cups chopped walnuts; 1 1/2 cups sugar; 4-to-5 tablespoons orange blossom water
For the syrup: 2 cups sugar; 1 cup water; the juice of half-a-lemon
» Make nut filling first, chopping walnuts to remain chunky. Add sugar and enough orange blossom water so ingredients are slightly damp. Set aside. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Unroll the filo sheets of dough and count them. Half of the sheets go below nut filling and half above. Using a pastry brush, generously butter the pan & each layer of dough. Layers should be damp with melted butter. Work quickly to prevent dough from drying out. Before baking, cut dough to fit size of pan. The dough should have a clean edge all the way around the pan. After laying out an buttering dough, spoon nut filling evenly over the last layer of filo. Continue layering rest of dough on top of nut layer, buttering each separately. Heat butter in microwave if it begins to thicken, adding butter if you begin to run out. Cut deep diagonal lines to form individual diamond shaped servings before baking. Bake uncovered at 325 degrees for one hour. The top should be golden and the edges should not be too dark. While baklava bakes, prepare the syrup to pour over dessert when it comes out of the oven.
» Syrup: In saucepan, combine sugar, water and lemon and bring to boil. Lower heat to medium-high, stirring constantly for 15 minutes. As it thickens, spoon syrup evenly over the tray of baklava when it comes out of the oven.
» Let cool, cut again along original diagonals and serve.
To please her discriminating palate and Middle Eastern ancestors, Sharon Reuter leaves her home near Camden Yards, heads east and drives PAST the Greek grocery stores near Hopkins Bayview on Eastern Avenue.
Just past Bayview, near the city line at Dundalk, she stops in a corner market called Koko — 6020 Eastern Ave. — for the secret ingredient in her Lebanese family’s baklava: mazaher.
That would be orange blossom water.
The Greek preparation of the fabled dessert typically calls for rose water. Greek cooks also use orange blossom water, but Reuter insists it doesn’t taste the same as the Middle Eastern variety.
The hint of citrus in Reuter’s confection — and the painstaking attention she gives to every detail — makes the difference between the average American diner’s experience of the flaky, honey nut dessert and something remarkable.
And as the late literary savant John Mason Rudolph Jr. liked to say from behind his mountain of books in rooming houses from one end of Crabtown to the other: “What little difference makes all the difference!”
“I walk the aisles and see the Arabic bread and baba-ganoush in a can — who has time to find good eggplant and roast it on the Weber grill in the winter? — and I think about how food was such an important part of my upbringing,” said Reuter, a graphic artist.
“Making the baklava the way my family did brings me back to my grandmother’s kitchen and all the fond memories that took place in that room.”
Eating her baklava, as a crowd of music and storytelling fans did not long ago at the Baltimore Chop, the coffee house and bookstore just a few doors away from Reuter’s, is a special treat.
Maybe because she goes to the trouble to find fresh — not frozen — filo dough. Or the fact that she makes her own syrup, eschewing honey and cinnamon so prevalent in commercial baklava.
“I get a warm feeling when I cook and reminisce,” she said. “But it also makes me sad that so many of my relatives are no longer here. “I think they’d be happy that their baklava lives on through me.”
