Today marked the first day of our super long Islamic New Year break (this holiday is not a big holiday for Muslims in Jordan, but our program gave us a 10-day break for it anyways). I was planning to go to this pop-up opera at سوك الجمع, a second-hand market in Ras Al-Ain on Fridays but the show never happened. Then when we went to Shmeisani for a hip-hop concert/show, it turned out the show was a kids dance show, had started 2 hours earlier, and was over 3x more expensive than advertised. Traveling in Jordan requires a great amount of flexibility- a very good challenge for a “planner” like me.
Taking our many taxi rides as a sunk cost, we headed back to the apartment for a cooking adventure- attempting the area’s popular dessert called Knafeh. Like most of my baking adventures, we were not only attempting a tricky dish but giving it a Crohn’s make-over. We took a recipefrom the web and then made it over so that it didn’t give my belly as much trouble as the bakery versions.
This is Knafeh from the best place in Amman- Habibah Sweets with locations throughout the city.
Another added twist to any baking adventure in my apartment- we only have a roasting pan and a brownie tray where there are individual squares for each brownie. Add to this that we have a gas stove with no hint on the knob as to what temperature or even the degree of hotness it is turned to. This means that we pretty much have to throw any of those temperature/time combinations in recipes out the window and just wing it. Oh, I almost forgot, we also have no measuring spoons or cooks. Our kitchen is not for the perfectionist chef, that’s for sure. Luckily I grew up in a house where my mom was always “throwing someth ing together” when we needed a dessert.
A little bit about Knafeh- there is no other food like it. It’s like a mix of a mozzarella stick, a danish? maybe done with the classic Middle East dessert ingredients of flower water, sugar syrups, and nuts. There are a few different kinds of Knafeh: hard, soft, rolled, the round pan kind, and then it also differs from area to area. I think my favorite kind is the one that uses the birds-nest type of dough which is callKnafeh Doughed the “hard” version.
We decided to go with the hard version (my personal favorite) this time around and took the easy way out and got the frozen Knafeh dough which is already shredded. I recommend this!
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The biggest changes we made to the recipe was getting rid of all the nut elements of the dish (no seeds, no nuts) and switching out the type of butter.
In the states,
Brummel and Brown Yogurt Butter has become “Ziah butter” in our house as it’s much lighter than regular butter and so easier to digest. No Brummel and Brown here, though, but I use a light Carrefour-brand margarine which does the trick.
I’ll go through our recipe her in case you’re interested in trying it. I feel like you should try Knafeh out to get an idea of what you’re working towards, but either way, this is a pretty yummy
dish! Once you have Knafeh once, you’ll be craving it forever after; at least I know I am.
1. Melt a good amount of butter in a pot on the stove and then mix the Knafeh dough into it so that all the butter is soaked up. You might need to add butter to make sure the dough has enough extra butter. WARNING: tasting after this step is not that satisfying of a taste but don’t be dismayed, the final product is delicious!
2. Slice mozzarella
(or the real kind of knafeh cheese that is sold here) and soak it in water to get some of the salt out. We did this for around 20 minutes instead of the 24hr recommendation and thought it came out fine.
3.Pour some more melted butter to cover the bottom of the baking pan and then push a layer of the dough down. We then poured some of the syrup of lemon, hot water, sugar, and rose (we didn’t have orange blossom) water over this layer to make it sweeter.
4. Lay down the layer of cheese.
5. Cover it with the rest of the dough and then pop it into the oven for some amount of time (maybe like 25 minutes?)
6.Take the pan out, pour a good amount of the syrup over it and stick it back in the oven.
7. We left the pan for a while longer in the oven just because we weren’t sure if we should be waiting for the dough to turn darker but we finally gave up after about 15 minutes and decided that it was as dark as it would get because we skipped the step of adding food dye to the dish.
8. Then take it out, serve yourself a piece, and pour lots more syrup on it- you might have to make more!
We were very pleased with our results and so was my stomach! This was definitely not as heavy as some of the Knafeh we get at bakeries and so a tempting option if you’re looking to really get your fill of Knafeh instead of just having a piece. Stay tuned- we will most likely try a soft recipe or two later this week.
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