Phyllo Dough

Baklava

June 17, 2010 by Charles 8 Comments

Baklava stresses me out.

As soon as I open the plastic packaging and roll out the cold sheets of phyllo dough, I feel like I’m in a race against time. I can picture the sand streaming down the hour glass, announcing the moment that the phyllo dough will become parched and unworkable, as if your potter’s wheel could only spin for so long. Time is of the essence, but working quickly is not necessarily the solution. Move too carelessly and too quickly, and the thin sheets will tear and break into equally unworkable pieces.

I’ve tried covering the sheets with cold towels, or keeping half the sheets in the refrigerator, but have not noticed any real difference. If I am going to work with phyllo dough, I am going to have to work quickly and carefully. And that stresses me out. …

Sweet Potato “Pie” or Yamakopita

January 25, 2010 by Charles 5 Comments

When it’s not ripping and breaking, or tearing and fraying, phyllo dough can be quite a treat.

Phyllo dough is paper-thin sheets of raw, unleavened flour dough, most typically found in Mediterranean cuisine. Indeed, the dough is most often associated with spanakopita and baklava – but little else. Which is perhaps why one of the leading producers of the dough has a running contest involving phyllo.

Always a sucker for a good recipe contest, …

Spanakopita

October 20, 2009 by Charles 19 Comments

During my senior year of high school, I got my first laptop. By today’s standards, it was slow and it was heavy. It hardly had any memory and it couldn’t even play a movie. But it had an ethernet port, and so, it had potential.

When I got to college, Firestone library was only a few hundred yards from my dorm room. But on a cold, wind-swept winter day, its collection and online database couldn’t have seemed farther. Fortunately, with a few keystrokes, and mouse clicks, its newspaper articles and scholarly journals were within reach. From the university network, I could also stream my Russian language files and download my French politics assignment. Early into freshman year, my laptop had become the epicenter of my college education.

Ten years later, …