Tufahije

Ingredients

• Firm apples6
• Walnuts — ground250 g
• Sugar300 g
• Water700 ml
• Lemon1
• Double cream300 ml
• Vanilla1 tsp
• Cinnamon stick1
• Walnut halves — to decorate6

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Peel the apples and core them without going through, so each forms a cup.

   20 min

2. 2

   Make a syrup of water, sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon, bringing it to the boil.

   8 min

3. 3

   Lower the apples into the syrup and poach them twenty minutes on a low heat, turning them.

   22 min

4. 4

   Lift the apples out with a slotted spoon and cool them completely, keeping the syrup.

   25 min

5. 5

   Mix the ground walnuts with three spoons of the syrup into a pliable mass.

   6 min

6. 6

   Fill the apples with the walnut mass, mounded, and set them in dishes.

   8 min

7. 7

   Spoon over the remaining syrup and top with whipped cream and a walnut half.

   10 min

About the dish

The apples are poached whole and peeled in the syrup. They should turn soft but hold their shape; overcooked they collapse and there is nothing left to fill.

The syrup is sharpened with lemon. Without the acid the apples darken as they cook and come out brown rather than pale.

The walnut filling is bound with some of the same syrup. A dry nut crumb spills out of the apple at the first touch of a spoon.

Worth knowing

• — Use firm, tart apples. Soft varieties collapse in the syrup within ten minutes and leave nothing to fill.
• — Test at the side with a skewer. It should meet slight resistance; a fully soft apple is already overcooked.
• — Tufahije are served cold, chilled at least two hours. In that time the syrup soaks in and the flavour evens out.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

8 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

54 g

More from Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Bosanski lonac — Meat and vegetables layered in a clay pot and cooked four hours without stirring.
• Bosnian burek — A spiral of hand-stretched pastry with a meat filling. In Bosnia only the meat one is called burek.
• Begova čorba — A thick chicken soup with okra, bound with yolks and soured cream, a Bosnian classic.