For Chantal, Not to TeaseBut to Wish You Were Here

Without giving away another's personal info, let me just say that I have a beautiful, smart, all-around fantastic friend named Chantal in Texas.  She speaks with a great French-Canadian accent, has three precious and handsome boys, and cooks like...wow.  One of her specialties is baking, and whenever I know Chantal is coming to a gathering with something from her kitchen, I know we are in for a serious treat.

One of the treats I've been the lucky recipient of is her Baklava (pronounced bak-la-wa here...you would have laughed to see me trying to name it using a "lava" ending and the confusion it got in response).  Click here to see about it on wikipedia.  Chantal swears it is easy to make, but I think it must be a labor of love.  It's a layering of filo dough, butter, pulverized nuts (typically either walnuts or pistachios), some spices, and this gorgeous honey syrup.  You pour the syrup over the layered "casserole" and let it sit and absorb.  So good baklava is both crunchy and syrupy/juicy at the same time.  For you hot tea drinkers, it is the perfection of accompaniments. 

Just thinking about it makes me drooooooollllll.

So all sorts of baklava and related treats are common here.  Here is a plate of goodies that I got from one of my favorite shining fancy superstores, Lu-lu.

I am not smart enough to know the names of all the little items...but I can tell you what's in them.

Around the plate edge are six dates. John already did a blog post on those, so I don't have to be smart about them.  Reds are from Qatar, and yellow are from Saudi.  The baklava is the little squares stacked on the upper right.  On the left is a little fold-over of filo dough stuffed with pistachios and the syrup.  Around the front are little rolls stuffed with pureed dates and chopped nuts or pureed dates and whole pistachios.  The one sort of in the very front/center is then rolled in sesame seeds.  Toasted sesame seeds...another holy-cow-I-want-to-drown-in-this item for me...

Notice there is no chocolate on this plate.  That does NOT mean there is no chocolate in Doha.  Quite the contrary...but that's another blog post...

Chantal!  I miss you! :)
PS: Yours is even better than the stuff we bought at Lu-lu.  Seriously.