Kunafa

Ingredients

• Kataifi pastry500 g
• Akkawi or mozzarella — unsalted700 g
• Ghee250 g
• Sugar400 g
• Water250 ml
• Lemon1
• Rose water1 tbsp
• Orange blossom water1 tbsp
• Pistachios100 g
• Orange food colouring — optional1 pinch

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

   Boil a syrup of sugar, water and lemon juice for ten minutes, take it off, add the flower waters and cool it completely.

   15 min

2. 2

   Soak salted cheese in cold water for two hours, changing it three times, and cut it into cubes.

   15 min

3. 3

   Pull the kataifi apart into separate strands by hand and shorten them with scissors.

   12 min

4. 4

   Pour the melted ghee over the pastry and rub it through with your hands until every strand glistens.

   10 min

5. 5

   Press half the pastry into a greased tin, spread the cheese short of the edges and cover with the other half.

   10 min

6. 6

   Bake at 190 °C for forty minutes to a deep gold underneath — check by lifting an edge with a spatula.

   45 min

7. 7

   Turn it out onto a platter, pour the cold syrup over at once and scatter with ground pistachios.

   10 min

About the dish

The syrup goes on cold over hot kunafa, or the reverse. Matching temperatures is the commonest mistake: the pastry goes soggy instead of staying crisp.

The cheese is unsalted and stretchy — akkawi soaked to remove its salt, or mozzarella. Salty cheese in a sweet pie does not work, and that is not a matter of taste.

The kataifi pastry is pulled apart by hand and soaked generously in ghee. Being sparing with it means a pale crust rather than an amber one.

Worth knowing

• — The syrup must be cold and the kunafa hot. Warm syrup on a warm pie gives soggy pastry and no crunch.
• — Keep the cheese away from the rim. At the edges it runs out and welds itself between pastry and tin.
• — Kunafa is eaten hot, while the cheese still pulls. Cooled it loses its main effect, and reheating has to be done in an oven.

Nutrition

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

Calories

680 kcal

Protein

20 g

Fat

38 g

Carbs

68 g

More from Egypt

• Koshari — Rice, lentils and pasta in one bowl under a vinegary tomato sauce and fried onion.
• Ful medames — Fava beans stewed to a cream with olive oil, lemon and cumin.
• Molokhia — A soup of jute leaves, slippery in texture, with a garlic and coriander tempering.