An Ode to Baklava

Today, one of my interns brought a tray of assorted baklava to the office.  To reiterate how my previous post started:

"Sugar crash is a very real and very brutal thing, my friends."

Turns out her parents own Hookah Nuts, a store in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that sells hookah and nuts.  Along with a bunch of hookah devices (although they are colorful and kind of elegantly shaped, I find them scary looking, like some sort of medieval torture instrument) and bins overflowing with nuts, they also sell dried fruits, candy, knickknacks, paddywhacks, nougat, and delicious baklava, the topic of day's ode.  Side note: their nougat is also amazing, but I could rhapsodize about that in an entirely other post...

Look at that macro phyllo dough action!  The delicate sprinkling of ground pistachios!  The glisten of sticky syrup!  Finally, the pièce de résistance (one you cannot see in the picture), is the ever-so-subtle hint of rosewater infused in the baklava.  The texture is at first crisp, but once you get through the top layers of phyllo, the center is more dense with chopped nuts and super sweet syrup.  Ooh la la.  I've never met a baklava that I didn't like, and I literally swooned when I took a taste of these.  Like, weak in the knees and fanning my face and eyes rolled back.  And believe me, I had like five or ten, but who's counting? 

Thank you to Yasmeen and her grandma for the amazing gift!