Galaktoboureko

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I have a lot of things to be thankful for in this life. One of the main things would be the world wide web. Without that I'd have pored over books and still would never have found out about this delicious Greek dessert. It was an Instagram entry by my Turkish friend Elif which led me to this dessert. It looked and sounded so delicious, I hunted down a recipe for it and decided to make it one Sunday.




A little difficult to make if you don't have phyllo pastry. But totally doable if you're in one of those places where you get them easily in the frozen section of your supermarket. I was really determined to do the whole thing by myself, but my maid Jayashree chipped in and said she could easily make
those paper thin translucent sheets of pastry.

We scheduled our time and distributed work to make it easy. She made the sheets & I made the semolina custard. Here goes. I tweaked the butter and sugar used cos I didn't want it to be overly sweet. Also I ran out of sugar while making syrup. :P

The original recipe is from here

For the Pastry
10 phyllo sheets
50g butter melted

For the Custard
170g semolina/sooji/rava
200g sugar
500ml milk
500ml cream
4 eggs separated
zest of one lime

For the Syrup
400ml water
200g sugar
1 stick cinnamon
zest and juice of one lime

Preheat oven to 160C

Prep the syrup. Bring all ingredients to a gentle boil till sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool. The cool syrup should be poured on the hot pastry and then left till all or most of it is absorbed by the pastry.

For the custard.
Whip egg whites and 50g sugar till soft peaks form.
Whip egg yolks and 50g sugar till the yolk is pale and fluffy
Gently folk in white to yolk mixture without losing any off the air.
Bring milk, cream and sugar to boil in saucepan. As soon as it begins boiling add semolina in slowly a little bit at a time whisking all the while till the mixture becomes creamy.
Take off heat.
Add the egg mix and fold in.

For the Pastry
Butter a 9" square baking dish
Layer 5 sheets of phyllo in the dish brushing melted butter between each layer.
Pour the custard and spread evenly. Smooth top.
Layer 5 sheets of phyllo on top of the custard brushing melted butter between each layer and on top of the final layer.
Cut the edges or fold in and scrimp the edges.

Bake in preheated oven for 75 mins or till the top is golden brown.

Pour room temperature syrup evenly over the HOT pastry as soon as its out of the oven. Give it time to absorb all the syrup. Atleast 4-5 hours. Slice up and enjoy.

For my part, the next time I make this, I would halve the custard cos I'd like more of the crisp from the phyllo and perhaps not so much of the custard. But I wouldn't mind having it as it is either.

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