Hey guys, welcome back to Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen. Today I’m going to be making one of a Mediterranean, very traditional dessert called Kanafeh. Now it’s spelled a couple different ways and I have all the spellings on my website, but it’s pronounced /kenefe/. It’s a great, great combination of filo dough with cheese and simple syrup. It’s so wonderful. It’s very sweet. I’ve gotten thousands of requests for this video so I’m making it for you today. You can get this recipe, and all of my other recipes, at www.DedeMed.com and remember, join my social network so that if you have questions or concerns or you need help with a recipe, we can check on it and other people can check and we can all help each other out to get these recipes right.
So what we are going to start off with is some shredded filo dough. You can buy this at lot of the grocery stores. It’s pretty common now. Filo dough and shredded filo dough, I just want to show you what it looks like. It looks like noodle hair. It’s like white noodles. We’re going to shred this up. We’re going to need some regatta cheese or sweet cheese. We’re going to need some mozzarella, some melted butter, a little bit of milk, a little bit of semolina, and a pan. I’m going to make about a medium-sized pan. I’m going to show you how to put it together.
Now I’m only going to use about half of this filo dough mixture because I am only making by medium-sized portion. Now I want to tell you guys, I got this recipe from a friend of mine. Her mother who made this for me and it was absolutely amazing. It was very creamy. It was very very very nice and, the outside was crispy. Her name is Mrs. Hannah. So I want to say thank you to Mrs. Hannah for giving me this recipe. It’s absolutely wonderful and I hope that I can only make it as good as you do.
So see, we’re just going to pull this apart. It makes a little bit of a mess, I know, but it’s ok. Now you can either cut this down and shred it in the blender, or you can do it by hand. Sometimes if you do it in the blender, it gets a little bit too fine. So I’m going to do it by hand. Just take it apart. I know it’s a little bit of a struggle. It’s ok. Just like that, and put the rest of it in a big because filo dough does dry up very fast. And you can freeze this until the next time you want to use it. So put this away.
You’re also going to want to pre-make your simple syrup. Either the day before or the evening before, so that you have it ready to go when you’re making this. This is served a lot traditionally for breakfast but then it somehow mainstreamed into, you know just being a dessert that’s served anytime of the day. So I’m going to shred it up with our hands, very good, just you know pulling it apart in shredding it.
So I finished shredding this with my hands. And so you see they’re not such long pieces anymore juts like that. What we’re going to do is we’re going to pour our sweet cream butter. I have two and a half sticks of sweet cream butter. I love using sweet cream butter it’s a sweet cream and it’s used best in pastries. Now you just want to mix it to make sure all of the filo is completely dredged in the butter mixture, just like that. See, and you can smell the butter. It smells amazing.
Then we get our pan. We’re going to put half of the mixture. We’re going to press it, spread it out. I want to press it into the bottom just like that. Even the mixture, it’s nice and evenly spread. Press it really good with your hands. Then the rest of the mixture, we’re going to use for the top. So I’m going to put this aside and we’re going to work on our filling.
So next step is we’re going to, oh my pan is really hot. I’m going to pour the milk, a half cup of milk with the three tablespoons of semolina. I’m going to let it come to a very light boil. Very light, it’s only going to take only about a minute or so. Make sure it’s mixed really well. This helps to bind the cheese. See, there you go.
So we’re going to pour. I have one packet, 15-ounce packet of regatta cheese. I’m going to put that into a bowl. And a cup of shredded mozzarella, I’m going to pour that in as well. And then we’re going to pour in our semolina and milk mixture which is, serves almost as like a glue, hold together everything. And just mix it all together. Oops, it can get a little messy sometimes. Let me get this out of the way. And see, just like that. It’s well-combined. We’re going to get our pan, and we’re going to put our mixture into it evenly, just like that. Make sure you combine, pack it really well. Then we’re going to get the rest of our filo dough mixture and evenly sprinkle it on top, and we’re going to pack that in as well.
You want to preheat the oven to 400 degrees and I’m going to place this in, and we’re going to cook it until for, I would say about 45 minutes until the top is nice and brown. I won’t know that the bottom is brown. What we’re going to do is we’re going to cook this and then I’m going to let it cool a little bit and then we’re going to flip it over, so just like that. With your hands, pack it down. Place it in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 to 400 degrees, and after that, we’ll come back.
We’re back with our kanafeh. I cooked it in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 to 400 degrees. After about 45 minutes, I put it on the top broiler just to make sure that the top crust is also browned as well as the bottom crust. I took it out of the oven. I let it sit out for about an hour just, you want them to serve it warm if you’d like to, but you don’t want to serve it so hot that, you know the cheese is overflowing everywhere. So you want it pretty much a little bit warmer than room temperature.
So I have it here. It’s been sitting for a while. I’m going to take a knife and I’m just going to run around the edge just to make sure that it comes out in one piece. I have a nice dish here. I’m going to flip it over onto the dish. Ready? Do the tap tap tap to make sure it all comes out, and there we go. There is our kanafeh. Look at that beautiful, brown, golden color. I want to take some of our pistachio. You can decorate it any way that you’d like with the pistachios. I’m just going to put some of these in this center here.
You can smell immediately. You realize it’s cooked if you could smell the butter. It smells amazing. And you serve it with some simple syrup because you have to remember we did not add any sweet to this, any sugar, so this simple syrup and the rosewater and orange blossom water that’s in the simple syrup also adds another great element of flavor to the kanafeh.
I hope you like this video. I’ve made it especially for all of my fans. You’ve requested it so many times. Enjoy it. Let me know what you think and if you have questions, email me. Join my network, my social network, and join be again for Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen.