I love sfogliatelle. They are as crunchy, creamy, and delicious as they are tricky to make. These Italian pastries are made with a copious amount of dough that is quite similar to phyllo in composition, and filled with a mixture of semolina, ricotta, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and candied orange peel. The filling MIGHT sound a…
Tag: phyllo
Apple brandy krempita
This dessert was an evolution of a previous post I made. Krempita is a Montenegrin dessert that consists of layers of phyllo dough and custard. It is similar to a napoleon, a mille feuille, or Greek galaktoboureko in that sense of being flaky pastry with a custard-y filling. This interpretation of it takes that Montenegrin…
Baklava layer cake
For the first half of March, my goal was to make as many green things as possible. This cake, while not outwardly green, has a green pistachio sponge hidden underneath a layer of spiced honey French buttercream. I love baklava, and wanted to translate the flavors, textures, and ingredients of it into a full-on layer…
“Feathered Apple”: a plated dessert
I created this dessert from just several techniques that I fell in love with, and wanting to compose those techniques into a cohesive dessert. Homemade phyllo is always something I love to do, while the usage of Almond Inspiration was just to add a pleasant nuttiness. I wanted to use hojicha as well, since it…
Fortress: a plated dessert
This is sort of my take on a PB&J, with a Jordanian/Albanian spin, using summer produce! I wanted to feature the peaches since we are in peak peach season in the summer, while using white sesame just felt like a great pairing, because more light and delicate than the more robust and hearty black sesame….
Only a fool: a plated dessert
So a fool can refer to a lot of things. It can be somebody who undercooked his filet mignon on national T.V. despite being a trained butcher(whoops), somebody who does not know what 2+2 is, or it could also be a dessert that involves a fruit puree being folded into cream. In the case of…
Peach “mille feuille”
I came up with this dessert because I wanted to try something new, and also in honor of two restaurants in L.A., Vespertine and Auburn(R.I.P. Auburn, you will be missed dearly). In Vespertine, we had this gorgeous parsnip and pear dessert where they garnished the edges of the bowl with circles of shaved pear. In…
Vegan baklava with pistachio ice cream
Baklava is one of my absolute favorite Middle Eastern desserts. Layers of flaky phyllo(or spelled filo as well, but same thing), with a toffee-like filling of caramelized nuts, and a delicious spiced syrup that soaks through everything and really brings it together. The really cool thing, for me anyways, about Middle Eastern desserts is the…
Give you the world: a plated dish
So this dish was actually in my to-do list for about four months. I wrote up the concept back in October, but I never really got around to making it. This dish is an homage to Middle Eastern food, which is actually a cuisine I came to really love during my time in D.C., living…
Knafeh with kataifi pastry
Now I have done knafeh in the past. But I have never had a chance to work with kataifi(shredded phyllo) due to never being able to find it. That is, until my coworker, Desiree, told me about a middle eastern market that was actually really close to where I live! Super special thank you to…
Gravity Bounce: a plated dessert
This is probably the last “Carole and Tuesday” inspired dessert, and in this case, it is based on the song “Gravity Bounce”, also by GGK. So the song itself is upbeat, playful, catchy, and fun, and when I think of the phrase itself, I immediately am drawn to Newton’s apple. So I decided to do…
Prince of the Growing Land: A plated dessert
This would be the third of my three princes who would have led me to my MasterChef Crown, had I been in the finale(cue sad violin music I guess?). Continuing with the sea, sky, and earth motif, this would be my earth-inspired dish and dessert! It is a buckwheat financier with brown butter bavarian cream,…
“Now or never”: a plated dish
This dish was meant to be more of a compliment to my signature chocolate cake, “Shines forever”, hence the rhyming names. For this dish, it is a seared ribeye(aka the only steak I really can confidently cook), with beef fat-wilted kale, crispy kale chip, red wine-mushroom-beef reduction, and a homemade phyllo-duxelle tart, garnished with shaved…
Super simple strawberry-phyllo mille feuille
Not everything I make has to be super complex or difficult. With this dessert, I tried my best to edit it down to just three things: crispy caramelized phyllo dough, Bismarck cream, and balsamic macerated strawberries. What? It’s simple by my standards. I mean, look at it! No mirror glaze, tempered chocolate, none of those bells…
Semolina cake with chocolate-Turkish delight ice cream
Truth be told, this recipe was directly inspired by controversial MKR contestants, Sonya and Hadil, and a dish that they prepared during the Cole’s ice cream challenge, where they made chocolate-Turkish delight ice cream with semolina cake and pistachio biscuit. I know that several people hate them because they got ejected from the show for…
Sfogliatelle or lobster tail pastries
I first heard about these when I moved to Boston for school. The North End, also called Little Italy, had several bakeries that served lobster tail pastries. They were these crunchy bundles that were stuffed with a sweetened ricotta filling. Traditionally, the filling is a mixture of semolina, ricotta, citrus, and sugar, but I decided…
Tarte Tatin Mirror Glaze Cake
This really just came about when I was thinking about a dessert for a family friend. I saw a very specific mirror glaze cake, that used a disk of passionfruit gelee or jam, and I thought about what other fruits I can do the same technique with. Since it was during the holidays, I wanted…
Bee pollen baklava
I can’t believe it took me this long to finally post a recipe that features homemade phyllo. Fun fact: I learned how to make phyllo from scratch the Montenegrin way from watching the Australian cooking competition, My Kitchen Rules, when a contestant, Zana, this snarky, germaphobic, perfectionist Montenegrin-Albanian lawyer made her own phyllo from scratch quite…
Freddy's Harajuku 