So, the 2nd anniversary of my first date with the boyfriend is coming up on Monday (feel free to mentally insert vomit smiley here ). His favorite food is baklava (and I don’t mind it myself) so I am going to make up a batch.
The last time I made this, I spend 90 minutes chopping nuts b4 the boyf got annoyed at watching me and finished the last 2/3rds of them (he used to be a chef, and thus is good at speed chopping)
The rest of the construction and baking of the baklava takes no where near this long (except for the cooling) and is actually kind of fun.
So, for all you dopers out there - is there a good technique for chopping nuts that won’t make my arms want to fall off?
I have most standard kitchen equipment (except for a microwave (which shouldn’t help this), and a food processor (which this recipe says is evil for baklava anyways)).
I will greatly appreciate any and all ideas!
-Peligro
(p.s. this is my first new thread…please be gentle!)
(p.p.s. I am currently too poor to register, and therefore cannot search, if there is another thread discussing this, please just point me in that direction!)
He’s tried before, but I have a distrust of sharp knives (so I tend to go slowly) - might have something to do with slicing off a piece of my knuckle last time I was in too much of a hurry to make a salad.
Maybe I’m missing the point, and this is supposed to be a labor of love; maybe you’ve considered this and have discarded this solution because they’re inferior; but you can buy nuts that are already chopped at most grocery stores. If those aren’t chopped finely enough for you, you could smash them into itsy-bitsy walnut powder with the back of a spoon on a cutting board. Sure, you’d have to do the bits individually, but the sense of accomplishment will be well worth it!
If not the blender, you can try this…I use it when I get impatient.
Put the nuts in a baggie. Take a standard unopened soup or veggies can and use the fairly-sharp bottom edge to chop the nuts in the bag. It’s just sharp enough to chop 'em up, but not sharp enough to cut through the bag (if you’re careful, at least).
Worked for me the last time I made cookies.
Enjoy!
The way I do it is to put them in a doubled plastic bag and roll them with a rolling pin. I also have a meat pounder that is round, 4" around with a short handle, I use that for spot pounding of pieces that escaped the pin.
I’m bumping this to say thanks to all for the great advice.
I came up short at the one kitchen store I had time to hit this weekend (though, I did manage to spend $80 on other things – those stores are dangerous) so I ended up using the ziploc bag + rolling pin and meat tenderizer method.
It worked like a charm, except next time I will do it in smaller batches, instead of trying to be “efficient” and putting all the nuts in one bag together. Also, I’ll do the almonds separately as they seem to be harder or something and stubbornly remained whole while the walnuts and pecans crumbled to dust.
If there’s interest, I’ll stop back tommorow and let you know how the final result turned out - it was ready this morning, but I resisted the urge to try some before my boyfriend got a piece
). His favorite food is baklava (and I don’t mind it myself) so I am going to make up a batch.
