Last Saturday, I went to the Borough market in London. I hadn’t been for a while and I stopped to a middle-east restaurant, Arabica, where I wouldn’t go if I were you. So disappointing. I had to resend the uncooked chicken, the waiter explained that it’s because they are corn-fed that we can eat it their chicken pink. I just know that eating a not well done chicken can be dangerous, that, I know. The rice was very nice still, with cardamom, crispy onions…. On the top of that it was expensive for what it was.

Very frustrated as I love that kind of food and was looking forward to eat my chicken skewers with spices, Turkish sweets, tea with rose petals etc so I decided to make my own baklavas.

Baklavas, serves 2

Ingredients :

• 1 pack of filo pastry
• 100ml of water
• 200g of sugar
• 150g of butter
• 1 tbsp of rose water
• 1 tsp of lemon juice
• 50g of pistachio
• 50g of peanuts

Method :

Put the water and sugar in a pan and bring to the boil till the syrup gets thicker, put the heat down and add the rose water and lemon, bring it back to the boil and set it aside.

Put the butter in cubes in a pan and melt it.

Unfold the filo pastry, with a brush, smear the first one with butter, be generous.

Roll it from one corner to form a long tube. Then shape it as a snail.

Repeat this operation for the whole pack of filo pastry.

Put them in a pre-heated oven at 200°/Gas 5 for 20/25 min till they are golden and a beautiful smell comes out of the oven.

Crush the pistachio and peanuts.

When they are ready, pour the syrup on them while they are still warm, add the crushed peanuts and pistachios and on the top, the rest of syrup which will help to stick the nuts on each snail.