This weekend we went to a GNOIF (Game Night of Indeterminate Frequency) over at our friends’ place. It’s a great time for convivial banter amidst board and card games of varying complexity. Everyone brings something potable and something noshable. I brought a bottle of sangiovese from the winery at Castello di Amorosa, and the finalized version of my baklava, a recipe I’ve been finessing for some time.
I can’t share the sangio with you (it was good, though), but I can share the recipe for baklava.
In this recipe, I cut the sometimes cloying sweetness by using salted pistachios, and by using honey for the syrup instead of sugar. The clean flavor of the orange blossom water, and the high, bright notes of the cardamom and the Vietnamese cinnamon also help bring the flavor profile up out of the Too Sweet Valley.
Here ’tis.
Unraveling Time
Desert Wind
Ploughman's Son
Ploughman King
The Year the Cloud Fell
The Spirit of Thunder
Shadow of the Storm
The Cry of the Wind
Beneath a Wounded Sky
Cryptogenesis: A Memoir
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 