[Contains some really porny pictures of food, but I put them inside spoilers] It sounds kind of unlikely to foreigners, but knafeh (كنافة) is this dessert made of layers of bird’s tongue noodles, usually short ones, with this soft stretchy white cheese in the middle, and it’s soaked in heavy syrup sometimes with rose water or orange blossom, and ground pistachios on top. It's so good, OMG. I miss it so much and they don't have it here, you can't even get any of the ingredients. There are recipes online in English though, but the cheese is always wrong. There’s a few types, sometimes the noodles are longer and it’s a roll with the cheese in the middle. Sometimes thin semolina dough is used instead of noodles, or in addition to noodles. You find it in the Levant and Turkey. The people I knew didn’t make it themselves, but we went out to buy it sometimes in Jordan, especially during Ramadan. There’s a Wikipedia article here. The layered type: Spoiler: Syrian knafeh The rolled type: Spoiler: more knafeh Somebody sent me a picture of knafeh filled with nutella, which just seems wrong to me, do not do that to the poor knafeh! But somebody else commented and said they'd had it and it was really good. I have no doubt some people like it, but it doesn't appeal to me, I don't like nutella that much. Combining two favourite desserts, knafeh and nutella, is a very Ramadan thing to do though. I don't know how long it's been around, but it's very popular this year, especially in the Gulf where you can't usually get the right kind of cheese. Spoiler: knafeh with nutella
I FUCKING LOVE YOU AND I WANT YOU TO COOK FOR ME PLEASE. Also knafeh without cheese is hardly knafeh. Get that fucking nutella shit out weird person that you know. Dessert wise I prefer basbousa personally, but knafeh is pretty fucking great. Also I never have any idea how I want to transliterate that name. Or most Arabic words really. I get caught up on the vowels and usually just say fuck it today the fetha is an e except in one place because I hate everyone. AND WHAT DO I DO ABOUT THE ح which always takes me a while to find on the keyboard and I just keep mashing jiim for like three minutes straight.
Its kind of like a cross between a knish and baklavah? It looks REALLY tasty, id love to try it someday.
So, I don´t think I´ve ever had that before but the bakeries around where dad lives sell these nests of the stringly substance in the middle picture, with pistacios in the middle, and they are the tastiest thing ever.
I had to look up what knish was! That looks tasty, I'd like to try that too :3 It's kiiiiind of like baklava, in that it's soaked in syrup, but with less layers, and cheese in the middle. If you know of any Arab or Turkish communities, they might know where to get knafeh, especially if they have ethnic restaurants or groceries. Living in a big city would help. Somebody told me about a Greek dessert called kataifi which is similiar to knafeh, it's a roll of crispy noodles with almond or walnut paste in the middle. Not surprising, Greece is not that far from the Levant.
Sadly, yes, the noodles are made with wheat, and they need to be crispy so I don't think rice noodles would work. All the rice noodles I've known go soft and floppy when cooked. Arab food is not all that gluten-intolerant friendly, especially the desserts, they usually have dough or semolina or noodles in them. There are lots of savoury dishes with rice though, and desserts like rice pudding or muhallabiyya (milk and cornstarch pudding). I developed a pretty uncomfortable gluten intolerance from living on bread and instant noodles for years (I didn't have access to cooking facilities, so bread it was), and had to give up a lot of foods. Including knafeh and qatayef, sadly :(
AAAAAH SOMEBODY ELSE KNOWS WHAT KNAFEH IS!! *fistbump* Let's get somebody to import the cheese and make some! The person who sent me the picture had never had knafeh so I forgive him. I think putting nutella in knafeh is terrible though, don't mutilate the poor knafeh, it's not knafeh anymore. I blame khaleejis for that one. But I try not to say that publicly, because some people like it and they get a little offended. I don't want to start another moloukhiyya war. Basbousa is really good too! My neighbour used to make that and share with everyone, I haven't had it in a long time. Some people write kanafeh or kunafeh but the way people pronounce it the first syllable is really short, it's not really a full syllable, so I go with knafeh. There isn't really a good way to transliterate Arabic in English, the latin alphabet doesn't really work for that language. Using numbers to represent sounds that don't exist in English helps some, but that can be pretty hard to read, especially since people spell things the way they pronounce them and everybody pronounces things differently. And I can't remember what all the numbers stand for, so that's confusing if I don't know the dialect the person is using. OMG I always hit ح instead of ج, I have done so much typing practise over the years but I still hit the wrong key. I've given up and just look at they keyboard briefly, it slows me down but at least I don't hit the wrong key three times in a row. د is easier for some reason, even though it's farther away.
Recipes in English keep saying to use ricotta cheese and it is soft, but noooooo it's the wrong texture, and it doesn't taste the same. Knafeh cheese HAS to be stretchy.
When I was working on a bloodswap where the theme was Troll Muhammad instead of Troll Jesus the Beforans who spoke Troll Arabic used a variety of ways of representing it. Blue Damara would write entirely in Arabic and Arabic script to people who spoke it natively (in this case just red Aranea). Red Aranea would steadfastly refuse to use it most of the time but would use an ugly looking transliteration where all long vowels are expressed by doubling letters if she had to. Purple Rufioh used the number filled chat Arabic and he used it frequently enough for that to count as his quirk in a way. Unlike Aranea he never expresses long vowels and the only way you would know there are any is if you knew the words themselves. So Damara would write صباح while Aranea would write sabaah and Rufioh would write 9aba7. Sadly I didn't have anyone who did the capitalizing letters thing. I guess Meenah could do that? So SabaH versus sakne. It was an exercise in terrible. Well that and practicing it and toying around with the various transliteration methods I've seen. And yeah د is weirdly easy not to fuck up and when I do typo I hit the backslash key instead. One of the things I miss most about Arabic class is seeing just how wildly people's pronunciations can differ. The professor herself is Syrian, but her classes tend to be filled with people from Egypt to Jordan to Pakistan. One of the other things I miss is people bringing in food and tea all the time. Jesus christ the food and tea. Veritable storms of it in my Arabic 2 class. By the end of things there was not a week that went by without someone bringing in something.
Holy shit I barely ever get to eat that. That's some good shit right there, though my mom rarely makes it
Holy crap knafeh looks amazing. I am not sure how cheesy the cheese is but even if it was super cheesy I would risk hours of stomach cramping to try this because it looks absolutely amazing. I wonder if there are any restaurants or shops near me that sell it... Everywhere near me sells baklava, which is amazing and my favourite. I mean baklava is flaky pastry and honey and nuts, not noodly pastry and cheese but it it's in any way similar then yeeeesssssss
It is so tasty! The cheese doesn't have a strong cheese flavour but it's still gonna have lactose and milk protein in it, I think that's more what you meant. Baklava is so good and pretty similar, I don't think you're missing out on too much if you can't manage or find knafeh.
Yeah, I have a mild lactose intolerance so like I can eat pizza with a cheese base but a cream-based dessert might cause pain XD Well, I can live with baklava if I can't find knafeh! But I will definitely try it if I can find it.
Man, I feel like I missed out--when I lived in San Francisco, I lived in a neighborhood with a large Arab population, and yet I never really explored the cuisine! I really missed some opportunities there, didn't I? *facepalms at past self* It wasn't like I didn't have opportunities to try Arab food there, either--this neighborhood had tons of Arab restaurants and a halal market on every corner, so this is all on me. But man, that sounds so tasty.
I really regret not eating it more often! Because you can't get it here at all. Man, there's a lot of things I miss. Western food tastes like paste now unfortunately XD
If you can eat pizza with cheese you will probably be fine, I think. I'm lactose intolerant too and I can eat knafeh no problem.
It's very mild cheese, kind of like mozzarella but very soft and stretchy. It's not very salty, and the syrup kind of overpowers what salt there is.
ahhh that looks so good, i'd love to try it sometime! i have no idea how i'd get hold of it though. :(
