Friday, September 26, 2008

Turkish lessons and Apfel Strudel

Taken in that order might save you from a weird experience. Let's say I'm a sucker for any food item I don't know. Show me something that is not at all or maybe remotely familiar and I'm tempted to buy or try. (Apart from items that should be left under the stone they crawled out under or hidden by the body where they have a function.) That being said, present it to me in a exotic language and you never know what happens...

Turkish. Yes. If I had any prior knowledge of the turkish language maybe I might have seen that the filo dough I bought in huge sheets was salted. Salted a lot. In fact, so much so that the first tentative bite of my apfelstrudel went straight into the bin. To be followed by the rest. Any idea how "heavily salted dough" spells in Turkish? Because I have another two packages of dough sheets in my pantry, one triangle filo and one durum tortilla.... or so I think....

The filling however was great. Try it. Use filo. Any kind. Unsalted.

Apfelstrudel Filling:
3 large eating apples (Jonagold, Golden delicious, Cox), peeled, cored and cubed
60 gr sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1.1/2 tbs rum
60 gr raisins (cranberries!)
60 gr currants (dried figs!)
1 tbs custard powder/corn starch / tapioca
40 gr toasted walnut pieces / hazelnuts / pine nuts
2 heaped tbs abricot jam
75 gr butter, melted
breadcrumbs

Combine apple, cinnamon, sugar, dried fruit, nuts and jam in a small sauce pan and let sweat for a couple of minutes. Off the heat, add your choice of starch to thicken the juices and stir to combine.

Use this filling in large sheets of buttered filo dough, and roll up jelly-roll fashion. Bake in a moderate oven 350F / 175C until golden brown, brush with left over butter and sprinkle with -powdered- sugar.

1 comment:

  1. Some things really are game killers. . . . salt in filo wrapped around sweet strudel filling would be one. Great title.
    That would hurt, throwing it out.

    ReplyDelete

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