Traditional sweet baklava, though one of my favourite Greek Recipes, is not something that you would generally find on a healthy living website. I have been working on trying to get a savoury version of this dish going that would have some of the same textures, a few of the same tastes and would be a healthier choice. The things that I wanted to include are:
- filo dough
- chopped nuts
- something sticky
I thought I would reverse engineer from a Nigel Slater marinade that he did a sticky marinade with lemon, honey, garlic, and mustard. I am not a huge fan of mustard so I decided to stick with the lemon and honey glaze.
- In a large baking dish layer six sheets of baklava, paint each sheet with olive oil before laying the next on top
- make a ground paste from : 225 grams of chopped nuts including pistachios, walnuts, and hazelnuts.
- Mix in a crumbly type of either vegetable or protein: mushrooms, mashed firm tofu, cooked mince, feta cheese. If you want to go for a truly original dish you may want to shy away from spinach and feta as that will give you a spinach pie! You can also season this with salt, pepper, chilli peppers, fresh rosemary, parsley, and thyme.
- Layer the the paste onto the layers of filo and top with the rest of the package of layered dough.
- Cut into squares and bake in the over at gas 5/180/350 for about 30 minutes until golden on top
- Sauce. Traditional baklava is soaked in a sticky honey syrup. Using the Nigel method, you would use the juice from 4 lemons mixed with a dollop of honey and a few cloves of very finely crushed garlic. Warm this gently for 5 minutes before pouring over the filo.