Multicultural Baklava in Honor of a Good ‘Hood

A Canadian friend from college liked to say that Canada is more of a salad bowl than a melting pot. I wasn't sure what he meant by this at the time -- but I finally understood years later, when I moved to Vancouver for a teaching position at the University of British Columbia.

The neighborhood I moved to, Kitsilano, was unlike any I’d ever encountered in the States. It was centered on a street portentously named Broadway, and this was, predictably, a wide, busy thoroughfare. What was odd to my urban American sensibilities, though, was the tiny scale of the buildings and shops lining this major artery. There were a few big chain supermarkets and fast-food outlets, but the vast number of businesses along Broadway were small, quirky, and family owned. As I was soon to discover, Kitsilano was walk-able and wonderful.

What I loved most about Broadway was its colorful and varied inventory of little food shops. There was a Safeway supermarket only a block from my place, but I discovered it was cheaper and way more fun to shop like the locals: I’d buy my vegetables and fruit at a little Chinese-owned produce stand; my coffee, spices, and pasta at another Chinese-owned grocery/imported food emporium just down the road; and my cheese and other dairy products at a Greek-owned grocery that always had the freshest feta and house-made yogurt. For treats, I could go to a tiny, well stocked wine shop; an old-school Italian delicatessen and bakery, or a terrific Malaysian hole-in-the-wall that made succulent Hainan chicken rice and laksa noodle soup.

While strolling between these shops, I’d peek into the numerous Greek bakeries scattered throughout the neighborhood, all featuring unfamiliar but beautiful little pastries and cookies, and around Easter, big braided wreaths of bread studded with bright red hard-boiled eggs. On Saturday mornings, when I did my weekly grocery run, the tables at these bakeries were filled with old men in porkpie hats, conversing energetically in Greek over coffee and pastries. Occasionally, one would bark out an order to the person behind the counter, who was usually young and hip-looking enough to be one of my students—and this hip young person would answer back deferentially in Greek.

Walking into any of these places was like visiting another country: the sights, smells, and language spoken in each of them were distinct. Of course, I had shopped at ethnic markets and bakeries of every sort back in Los Angeles, where I grew up —but I’d never seen so many, representing such a diverse range of cultures, so close to each other, and so vibrantly integrated into the greater community. People young and old spoke to their compatriots in Greek or Cantonese and to everyone else in fluent English. And Anglo-Canadian customers at these little shops were perfectly at ease with this. Nobody ever asked the Greek cheese-maker where the Kraft singles were. Nobody ever shook a fist at one of those old men in porkpie hats, yelling, “This is Canada! Speak Canadian!”.

Back in Los Angeles, entering an ethnic grocery could be a fraught experience. Shopkeepers and regular customer sometimes seemed to resent or distrust outsiders. Even in Chinese markets, I’d get the cold shoulder because of my near-non-existent Chinese language skills. But on my weekend forays through the little shops of Kitsilano, I had no such worries. If I asked dumb questions about some basic Greek or Indonesian food product, someone would politely answer them – in English. And this kindly soul would usually make a sale.

At first, I merely marveled at this alien social dynamic and assumed it was a happy quirk of the neighborhood. But it later dawned on me that the cheek-by-jowl Chinese and Greek markets of Kitsilano and the welcoming attitude of local shopkeepers embodied my Canadian friend’s vision of his homeland as a grand tossed salad. Each immigrant culture proudly contributed its unique color and vision to the Canadian landscape, while remaining comfortably distinctive – and comfortable with the cultures and mores of its neighbors.

Later still, I realized why I sometimes got that weird treatment in ethnic markets back in the States: it wasn’t that the owners and regulars had anything personal against outsiders. It was that they feared their cultural distinctiveness would be lost forever in the American melting pot. And they decided -- wrongly and regrettably -- that the only way to keep what was precious to them was to keep everyone else at bay.

I’ve thought often about those little shops in Kitsilano since moving away, and I miss them still. Of course, Canada is not without ethnic tensions of its own, and the US has its share of thriving multicultural communities. My current hometown is one of these. But try as I might, I’ve never been able to find a place here where I could buy hand-made baklava and freshly pressed tofu and gai lan within walking distance of each other, with the hum of Greek and Cantonese conversation in the background.

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One of the things I miss most about Kitsilano is the huge number of places where one can sate a craving for sweets. In honor of my old neighborhood, I’ve engineered a love child between Greek baklava and Chinese dessert dim sum, inspired by Kitsilano’s two dominant food cultures. It has the structural bones of a classic Greek baklava (crunchy layers of buttery phyllo dough drenched in a spiced syrup) with a classic sweet dim sum filling of peanuts, coconut, and sesame. It's the type of little sweet that is often offered to visitors in both Chinese and Greek homes. And in both cultures, it would be the height of rudeness to turn it down.

FAR EAST BAKLAVA

Filling:

1-1/4 cup roasted unsalted peanuts

1/3 cup sweetened flaked coconut

2 tablespoons roasted sesame seeds

1 tablespoon sugar

1. Put all ingredients into a food processor and pulse until the nuts and coconut are finely chopped, but not pasty. Set mixture aside until you’re ready to assemble the baklava.

Syrup:

¾ cup sugar

¾ cup water

¼ cup honey

½ stick cinnamon

2 slices peeled, fresh ginger (each should be about the size of a nickel and about ¼ inch thick)

2 teaspoons lime juice

1. Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil.

2. Remove pan from heat as soon as the mixture starts to boil. Do not allow it to reduce.

3. When the syrup is cool, transfer it to a storage container and put it in the refrigerator. The syrup needs to be cold when poured over the cooked baklava, so should be made ahead of time.

Assembly:

½ pound phyllo dough, thawed

6 ounces (1-1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted

Equipment: a 9-1/2 x 14 inch baking pan or slightly larger cookie sheet

1. Grease the baking pan or cookie sheet. Carefully unroll the phyllo dough, keeping it covered as you work so it doesn’t dry out and become brittle. Keep the butter warm and liquid as you work.

2. Place a sheet of phyllo in the bottom of the greased baking pan. Smooth it out to remove any wrinkles, and brush its entire surface with melted butter. (The brand of phyllo I used came in sheets that fit a 9-1/2 x 14 inch pan almost exactly; if your sheets are larger, cut them to fit.) Repeat this process until you have 10 layers of buttered phyllo. When layering the phyllo sheets, try to avoid getting air pockets between the layers.

3. Sprinkle 1/3 of the filling evenly over the10 layers of buttered phyllo.

4. Top the filling with a sheet of phyllo, brush the sheet with melted butter, then top with a second sheet of phyllo and brush that with butter as well.

5. Repeat 3-4 once.

6. Sprinkle the remaining 1/3 of the filling evenly over the phyllo layer, then top with 5 sheets of phyllo, buttering each sheet as you go.

7. Freeze the assembled baklava for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

8. When the baklava is partly frozen, remove it from the freezer. Using a serrated knife, trim the edges and score it into 2-inch squares, cutting through all layers of phyllo. If desired, score each of the squares into two triangles.

9. Bake the baklava until the top layer is golden brown, about 50 minutes.

10. While the baklava is still warm, pour the cold syrup evenly over it so that all pieces are covered. Allow the baklava to cool before serving.

Koeksisters: The South African Sweet That Sucks

I was born in Pittsburgh and raised on a steady diet of Brady Bunch reruns, Barbies, and TV dinners, with the occasional ten-course Chinese banquet thrown in. My husband Glenn grew up in Johannesburg with childhood memories of being chased out of a river by a charging hippo and thinks Christmas was meant to be a summer holiday.

And people think I'M the exotic half of the pair.

Glenn's tales of growing up in South Africa never cease to intrigue me. Even more exotic to my mind than Glenn's explanations of strange South African regionalisms (when Anglo-South Africans say they'll do something "just now", this means "I'll get around to it when I darn well feel like it") are his recollections of South African food. South African cuisine features items such as biltong (venison jerky) and boerwors (farmer sausage) that sound to me like names of things people would fight over in a science-fiction novel ("The Alliance has captured the biltong and taken it back to Nebula 9! We're doomed!").

Glenn's childhood memories are also filled with traditional English plum puddings, a kind of cornmeal mush called mealie pap, various curries and stews, and the enticingly named monkey gland steak, which contains neither monkeys nor glands. All of these dishes reflect the vibrant and often volatile mix of African, Dutch, English, and Indian cultures that molded his homeland.

But the most baroque and intriguing of all the South African treats of his youth is the oddly named koeksister: a braided or twisted fried pastry soaked in flavored syrup until, according to Glenn, it is juicy enough to squirt syrup when you bite into it. Koeksisters are so rich that even the most ardent koeksister fanciers warn against eating more than one per sitting – and yet most traditional koeksister recipes produce several dozen of the things. Perhaps people needed all those extra calories to outrun charging hippos.

The name "koeksister" comes from the Afrikaans words for "cake" and (obviously) "sister". I suspect the "sister" part refers to the two or more strips of rich dough entwined to form a single pastry. The origins of the dish itself, though, are not clear: some sources claim they evolved from traditional Dutch doughnuts (Afrikaners are descendents of the Dutch immigrants who arrived in South Africa in the 17th century); others claim they were brought to South African by Cape Malay slaves originally from India and Indonesia. Some in the latter camp posit the koeksister to be a direct descendent of syrup-soaked Indian fritters such as jalebi and gulab jamun.

A third camp, however, splits the difference, noting the existence of two distinct koeksister variants, each favored by a different demographic: a spicy, cakey (and often coconut-coated) version favored by the Cape Malays, and a less-aggressively flavored type favored by Afrikaners.

In scouring South African cookbooks and the internet for recipes, I've found two basic types: those leavened with baking powder, and others leavened with yeast. Since the yeasted versions would have a more bread-like than cake-like consistency, I wondered if the yeasted version was the Afrikaner variant, and the baking powder version the Cape Malay one.

This theory, though, proved to be problematic: the koeksister version Glenn grew up making (from a recipe given to him by an Afrikaner family friend) was leavened with baking powder, soaked in a plain sugar syrup, and was more cookie-like than breadlike. So the origins of the yeasted version remain a mystery—at least to me.

The recipe Glenn used growing up is long gone. The recipe below – made with a biscuit-like dough and a ginger-and-lemon-infused syrup – is intended to resemble that lost recipe as closely as possible, except for the extra flavoring in the syrup. It is a hybrid of several recipes from a number of different sources. One of these recipes –from Anna Trapido's book Hunger for Freedom: The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela, later re-printed in The Guardian, comes with a striking story: these koeksisters were served to Mandela, shortly after his election, by the widow of apartheid architect and former prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd.

One can scarcely imagine a more potentially awkward meeting – or a more appropriate way for these two individuals to break bread than over a sweet confection as twisted and complex as the events that brought them together.

Koeksisters (South African syrup-soaked fritters)

Makes about 14 5-inch pastries

Preparation note: It is notable that while there is nearly endless parametric variation in koeksister recipes -- yeasted or non-yeasted dough, braided or twisted strips, flavored or plain syrup -- virtually every recipe emphasizes the same technical point: for the proper levels of juiciness and crunchiness, koeksisters must go immediately from the deep fryer into the ice-cold syrup. You'll know you've got it right if you hear an audible sucking sound as the sizzling koeksister drinks in that icy syrup.

And this secret to koeksister success may be one of the few things most South Africans can agree on: if it doesn't suck, it's not going to be any good.

For the soaking syrup (start the day before)

3 cups granulated sugar

2 cups water

Zest of ½ a small lemon, in large pieces

3 large slices peeled fresh ginger (slices should be about the size of poker chips and about ¼ inch thick)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine ingredients in a heavy saucepan; boil together over medium heat for 10 minutes. When cool, transfer to a storage container and chill overnight.

For the koeksisters:

2 cups cake flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

½ cup milk

neutral oil (such as canola) for deep frying

1. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. Rub the butter into the flour mixture with your fingers until the mixture has the texture of cornmeal.

3. Add the milk and mix until a smooth dough forms. Wrap dough in plastic and allow to rest for at least 2 hours.

4. Roll the dough out on a floured surface into a 5 x 14 inch rectangle with a thickness of about ¼ inch.

5. Cut the dough into strips about 5 inches long and ½ inch wide. Twist pairs of strips together, pinch the ends, and allow the koeksisters to rest, covered with a clean dishcloth, for about 15 minutes.

6. While the koeksisters are resting, heat about 2 inches of oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat.

7. Meanwhile, pour some of the syrup into a small container so that it's at least 3 inches deep. A small loaf pan is ideal for this. Keep the loaf pan filled with cold syrup in the refrigerator until ready to use.

8. When the oil is hot but not smoking (about 350 degrees) put in a test koeksister: cook it until it swells and is evenly golden brown.

9. When it's done, remove it from oil, allow excess oil to drip off, then plunge it immediately into the cold syrup. Keep it completely submerged in the syrup for about 10 seconds, then remove and place on a rack set over a cookie sheet so that any excess syrup can drain off.

10. Break it open: if it's cooked all the way through, the oil is at the right temperature and you can continue frying and soaking the remaining koeksisters. If the outside is browned but the inside is raw, turn down the heat.

11. Continue frying and soaking the koeksisters as directed in 8 and 9, adding more cold syrup to your soaking container as needed. Serve with coffee and conversation.