holiday greetings! celebrate the season with alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking gift book offer!

my new december art news went out yesterday with a holiday greeting which i'd like to share here, that includes a holiday offer of 5 copies of alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking for gifts, as everyone loves alice's kitchen!!! 5 copies including free shipping for $75 if you order by december 18th. 

email me right away to get these books for your loved ones! or if you just need one copy, use the "buy now" on  my website to purchase via paypal. or you can also buy through amazon, if you prefer!

let me know if you'd like your books signed and personalized!

remember to find the great recipes for holiday pastries in alice's kitchen! the baklawe (baklava) posting and other Christmas cookies in this blog provide inspiration as well as direction.

please email me if you'd like to be on my emailing list!

sending love, blessings, abundance, joy, great health, and peace in the new year!

and most of all, happy cooking!

lebanese christmas cookies—installment number one—baklawe (baklava)...yes, this is late, but beautiful and oh, so yummy!

yes, i said i was going to bake christmas cookies, and i did—baklawe (baklava) as far as the eye can see! here's one of the trays i made and shipped in tins across the u.s.a. to some lucky folks!

this is how it all begins:

with the old-fashioned nut-chopper—this one was my dear mother alice's—walnuts from my walnut tree, (thanks to baba! and i can't resist sharing this recent photo of him under the walnut tree with his latest catch—and i caught him in the act with fresh feathers on his mouth! poor beautiful robin!)

and of course, my copy of alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking for the recipe on page 203! if you don't have the cookbook, the recipe is pretty simple: a mixture of ground walnuts with a little sugar and orange flower water is the filling that goes between layers of buttered filo dough; baked and then topped with a cold simple syrup flavored again with orange flower water. heavenly, yes divine!

here's the filling spread across one half of the package of buttered filo dough:

now the rest of the filo gets buttered and layered over the nut mixture and cut into squares or diamonds, like this and then baked:

the butter is not just melted, but clarified (recipe on page 39), which is simply melting and cooking the butter, lifting off and discarding the white foamy bubbles that you can see at the left side of the pot in this picture, and not using the sediment at the bottom. clarified butter (samne in Arabic) is the same as the Indian ghee, the main quality being that it does not burn as quickly as plain butter:

when the baked baklawe comes out of the oven, the made-ahead simple sugar syrup (attar) (or agave syrup) flavored with orange blossom water is drizzled over the top. here's the scrumptious finished product:

the diamonds

or the squares

i also baked almond crescent cookies (nus qamar), and fig cookies flavored with anise and mahlab! soon i'll bring up the photos for those! till then, happy cooking and happy new year!

tis the season for baklawe! fa la la la la! la la la la!

Growing up in Alice's Kitchen, sweets and pastries were reserved for special occasions and holidays rather than a regular after-dinner event. a big bowl of fresh, seasonal fruits was our typical dessert, while the homemade farmers' cheese (jibn) and olives that mother and sitto cured from our tree in the front yard remained on the dinner table with some arabic bread, fig jam, and the occasional halawe (halvah).

mother's irresistable homemade baklawe (baklava) was for the holidays, when she'd graciously package up numerous tins of sweets to share with friends, guests, neighbors, and relatives visiting from arizona or other far away places.

her baklawe—so light and delicious—one piece was never enough. this quality distinguishes our baklawe from others that are so heavily laden with syrup and sweet, one piece can be too much! in the old country (lebanon), people made their own filo pastry, but thank goodness in LA in the 1950s there was one Arabic grocery store Nasrawey's on Hollywood Boulevard, where they sold frozen filo pastry dough. how lucky we are now that most supermarkets in major cities carry this, making baklawe a fun holiday baking project with kids, as they love brushing on the butter, and grinding the walnuts in an old-fashioned nut grinder!

so i'm getting in the mood to make baklawe to fill the Christmas tins i just bought and to use the fresh crop of walnuts from my tree—rescued from the squirrels this year by my hero doggie, baba ghannouj! here's a photo of last year's tray. making this is much easier than one would imagine, and the results are worth the effort.

i use a utility paint brush to spread the melted butter. and instead of basting each filo sheet, save time by placing two sheets at a time which coats each sheet on one side. half of the buttered filo dough goes on the bottom of the baking tray, then a layer of walnuts, sugar, and orange flower water mixed together, and then the final layer of filo brushed with butter. a sharp knife is best to cut diamond-shaped pieces before baking. when the hot baklawe is removed from the oven, a cold simple syrup flavored with orange flower water or rose water and a little lemon juice is drizzled over the top. agave syrup works beautifully in place of sugar! the pieces need to be cut through again, but one buttery bite of this Arabic delicacy is heaven-sent! happy holidays and happy baking!

oh, yes, of course the complete recipes for baklawe, jibn, and how to cure olives are in Alice's Kitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking! so order your copies now for holiday baking and gift giving!