Ekanar

Greets nand Welcome Ping, enjoy your time! Ek

Here's lesson 4 Hana and the garden in the same Gallery ... Ek

Creations from an Eklectic Kitchen Baklava Recipe All amounts are approximate. Baklava is a pastry popular in Middle Eastern countries. Baklava is layers of phyllo dough alternating with a sugar and spice nut mixture, and then the whole thing is soaked with fragrant sweet syrup. The recipe can be a bit time consuming. The tissue paper-thin phyllo dough is fragile and breaks easily (check the box, you’’ll find it in the freezer section, make sure it’s not freezer burned (little ice crystals on it)). As always fresher is better. Ingredient List: 1lb. of chopped nuts, walnuts and/or pecans, almonds, or in some cases pistachios are used, mine I use a 50/50ish mix of walnuts and pecans freshly chopped, I get the ones at a health store so they are shelled and fresh. A nut chopper works great or just a chef’s knife. I get 1lb each, I’ll eat them anyway and that way I can adjust the amount and blend for taste. *Disclaimer: when using a chef’s knife to cut nuts wear eye protection and a suit of armor * 1lb. Phyllo dough, any major food chain carries it in the frozen pastry section. 1.5 lbs. butter – Don’t clarify, the milk solids and salt are good for ya just keep it stirred as you use it. 1 cup sugar – right just have the bag around 1 teaspoon cinnamon *see above comment* just have it around. 1/3 teaspoon ground cloves – now on this one be careful, the idea is a subtle spicy flavor not to taste like a Christmas ham! ½ teaspoon ground cardamom – same as above easy does it. The syrup is the kicker! A good syrup goes along way so spend time here and easy on the flame, melted not nuked is the watch word. 1 cup sugar plus really I have no clue I just cook till it’s right … 1 tablespoon Rose Water (Middle Eastern store or section) 1 tablespoon Orange Blossom water same as above. Now here’s the deal … these two ingredients not that expensive but you’ll hardly use them unless or like me and find uses for them. The both are good to put in a little water for a refreshing splash in the face after a hard night modding or toss in salad for a whiff of flavor etc. Be creative! 1 lemon twist – you know what that is right just the rind, a small slice, turn so the outside of the peel is facing the mixture and twist, this causes the oil to release, if you look close you’ll see oily patches on top of the liquid. A few cinnamon sticks … hmm can I use ground? …. I’ve done it, it worked but sometimes cooking is all about “The Flare†(careful not the flare-up) A few whole cloves and cardamom seeds again you’re going to be liquefying the sugar and cooking the spicy flavors into the syrup so just your own judgment and taste. What did I forget … no matter. Ok next “The Procedure†Did I tell you this is a two day project … Oh … read on if I haven’t scared you away ... The procedure – Set oven to 350, or as I was taught 375 because when you open the oven to put the pan in your gonna lose a good 25 degrees, you cook it at 350. Thaw the phyllo dough out overnight … opps that makes it a 3 day affair, no matter if your still reading you probably hungry by now. Have a snack … I’ll wait. Ok, the nut mixture is fairly straight forward, cinnamon, sugar, ground clove and cardamom and chopped nuts mixed in a bowl. As I said it’s to taste so used nuts of your choice just chop them and sugar and spices should completely coat the nuts and then some as it’s the filling. Not too much though, the syrup is the kicker remember. Pan size 9x13 Butter the pan … butter - if using LoCal margarine or Pam please place your cooking utensils down and back away from the counter! Really if you have too, I have no idea how the water in the margarine will react. You may have to lower the temp and increase the time to get the water out without burning the top … At this point you have a choice, I’ve done it both ways, you can cut the dough to fit the pan or you can leave it a tad bigger and use a pastry knife (or back edge of a butter knife) to push the edges down, kinda makes the edges more doughy that way. Butter each sheet with a brush; use a soft one so it won’t tear the phyllo. So butter pan, place a phyllo sheet in the pan, butter sheet, rinse and repeat till you have 12 sheets for the bottom (the top will be the same), 7 sheet are in between the layers. After you have 12 sheets down, sprinkle in nut mixture. Again, it’s up to you how thick, my experience is that more layers helps it to hold together, so here are some schemes: 12 top and bottom is good. Use 7 thin nut layers with 3 sheets in between (my fav … more work but holds together nicely) or 3 layers with 7 sheets in between Or find your own scheme. I find it easier to cut at this point, triangles, squares, circles whatever J Away, once that’s constructed, bake for 30ish minutes till golden brown (make sure it’s on the center rack) **know your oven – hot spots, if you need to turn it mid-cycle etc. So, here’s one of the more important secrets: Either pour cold syrup on hot baklava or hot syrup on cool baklava (my favorite). The idea is to get the baked baklava to instantly soak up into itself the sweet syrup, not to have it swimming in it! So I cool mine overnight. Ok the syrup is easy too. Cup or so of sugar half the amount of sugar of water... E.g. 1cup sugar, ½ cup water Toss in the cloves, cinnamon sticks and cardamom. Heat obviously till the sugar melts into a syrup, add rose water so you can taste it in the mixture, same with the orange blossom water. Not overpowering but a subtle hint. Few twists of the lemon. Trust me flavor is as much about smell as taste and when you taste complex combinations cause folks to go wtf that’s great Cook till tasty. Again hot syrup over cool baklava … pour over the baklava … and consume. To serve at a function use those lil’ cupcake papery thingys to put individual pieces into and on a tray. Love from the Ekletic Kitchen

If you like another tester I'm game. Lemme know, I mean I'm on strike from MOM she's not blue, epic fail there. Ek

Cool IS thx ... hmm no blue I may have to go on strike! We want Blue! We want Blue! *chant* feel free to move this to the correct location, if you can, so others can benefit ... Ek Hana can be a pita

I had a strange thing or two happen with MOM. 1) I have MOM managing 4 Oblivion installs and it works great really superb! ... except when your crash your rig or just restart/power-off whilst MOM is running (has happened twice) it loses it's images.xml (corrupted?) Then after restarting it, the active image is blank, then upon restarting MOM again it has "No Active Image" showing (default xml I assume). My work around is to just re-import a install (so I can see the syntax of the images.xml), reset setting file and hack images.xml to reflect other installs. 2) MOM doesn't work really well in a multiple monitor environment, when I unplug my secondary monitor from my laptop MOM stays put. No big. I just close MOM then reopen after windows gets it's poo together. (Could be a Windows thing .. probably) 3) This of course is the most disconcerting problem of the batch .... MOM needs a blue theme Ek