Jaysus, but isn’t immigration just fucking great? Definitely the best thing to have happened to Britain in the last millennium plus. Suddenly there’s all these dynamic people with the guts to make a new life in a strange, unwelcoming people and bringing their foodstuffs with them. Not to mention the fact that restaurants and cafés are now staffed by attractive, young East European women. And doesn’t the hijab set off a pretty face nicely? Ooooh, and Somali women with their high cheekbones, bright eyes, succulent lips and gorgeous skin tones. Mammmmmma!…
Ahem. Better stick to foodstuffs. So. On Friday I discovered a new Turkish/Kurdish shop, which gave me an opportunity to practice my rudimentary Turkish. I bought
- Pickled Vegetables (Turşu)
- Sigari Börekler - long, thin filo pastry rolls containing feta-ish cheese (beyaz paynir)
- Salep – the powdered root of an orchid, used for making a milky drink.
- Portion-sized cartons of Ayran – salted yoghurt drink, similar to salt lassi, but never spiced.
- A set of six tea glasses.
- Herbal teas – Lemon verbena with mint and aniseed and Yerba Maté. Much cheaper than in health food-y places.
- Pine honey (with a smokey, resiney flavour)
- Jars of jam: Bergamot, Sour Cherry and Carrot. (As we citizens of the EU know, carrots are a fruit. Just like rhubarb!)
But I’m not going to tell you how to make stuff with them. I’m going to tell you about strudel. I lie and say I bought the filo pastry for it from the Turkish shop…but I didn’t.
Take some butter and melt it in a microwave.
Cover a tray with baking parchment.
Lay down a sheet of filo pasty and brush it with the butter. Repeat until the pastry is used up. If your pastry is in small sheets, overlap two sheets, inna spliff style, alternating direction between layers.
Now…there are various good things you can put in this:
- Sliced Apples, cinnamon, a few sultanas (obviously).
- Mix some ground almonds, butter and sugar. Layer this on the pastry and top with slices of pear. It’s a good idea to add some lemon juice to the pears as you slice them. It stops them discolouring – and besides, the sharpness is good.
- This is the one – based on a strudel I had in Budapest years ago. The famous place for cakes in Budapest is Café Gerbeaud – stunningly good cakes, ornate surroundings, and waitresses in these really cool orthopaedic boots with cutout toes and heels. But the best cake I had in Budapest was also the cheapest, from a wee caff. And you can now recreate it using the bottled Polish sour cherries or cherry compote that we can now find in these parts. Anyway…Take some ricotta and sweeten to taste. A layer of ricotta, a layer of cherries, a layer of ricotta. (Trust me! The ricotta is transformed by cooking and doesn’t turn out all creamy).
Now fold your strudel. You’ll want to have put your filling on so that it occupies no more than ¼ of the width and isn’t piled too high. Plus stop a few cm from the ends. Fold over one side of the pastry. Brush its edge with butter. Fold over the other side so that it overlaps generously. Brush each end and fold them over too. Now very carefully (and possibly with the help of an extra pair of hands) turn the strudel over so that the joins are on the bottom. Brush with more butter. Bake. Dust with icing sugar. Serve sliced.
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