There is a proper way to eat a baklava: you must place the whole portion in your mouth in one go and flip it upside down so that the dense sticky bottom hits the roof of your mouth. Ideally you’d also sip a strong tea, the colour of “rabbit’s blood” as they say in Turkey. With a dessert so beloved across the Middle East, you see, the act of eating is almost as much of an art as the act of making.
Autumn is a time for reflection, and making baklava requires a little devotion, time to pause and reflect. I went on a quest to make the easiest (but tastiest) baklava, and asked experts from aunties to baklava masters for their wisdom. This is the result – the concertina baklava, where the layers are side by side, rather than stacked vertically; or as Auntie Zekiye calls it, “The lazy wife’s baklava.” I am no wife and I’m certainly not lazy, but I love something that’s almost magic in the way it comes together so effortlessly. It is rich and indulgent, and if you need justification to eat it, which you don’t in the east, consider it an act of sustenance for the coming cold months.
