- Filo pastry, forty layers, each buttered
- Ground Antep pistachios (or walnuts)
- Sugar syrup with a little lemon
Baklava
Pistachio baklava for sale in Gaziantep. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Baklava is forty whisper-thin layers of filo, each brushed with butter, filled with ground pistachio (or walnut), and soaked in syrup. Gaziantep's pistachio baklava is the benchmark the whole country measures itself against.
Good baklava shatters when you bite it and is not too sweet: the syrup should glisten, not pool. Eat it within hours of baking; day-old baklava is a different, lesser thing.
Key ingredients
Where to try it
- Gaziantep: the great baklava houses (the city's pistachio baklava is the reference).
- Baklava shops in Istanbul's Karaköy and Kadıköy.
- Eaten with clotted kaymak cream in the southeast.