Learning to make Greewesh

For the last day of my baking class (before summer break begins), Raz offered to teach me how to make a popular Algerian dessert, called greewesh (or griwech, or however you want to spell it phonetically so that it's pronounced greewesh.  I think she wrote it French phonetically, and it came out grisouish.  Haha.)  Anyway, most Algerian desserts are filled with nuts that I don't like, and have a tendency to be dry.  But greewesh, with no nuts, and that has honey, solves the dry problem.  It's my favorite.  When a plate of treats comes out, I beeline for the greewesh.  I was thrilled to learn how to make it!

I found a blogger who wrote the whole recipe out, in English!, with great photos.  You can follow that HERE.  Also, she says to use yeast, which isn't listed as one of the ingredients...we used about a tablespoon of baking powder instead.  (Pantene--you should check out her whole blog--you'll love it!)

Once the dough is made, (this is where it gets interesting, and when I started taking photos), you roll the dough out flat and pretty thin (thinner than an average american pie crust), and use a grooved roller to first make squares.  Within the squares, you cut five lines that do not go all the way to the edge of the square.

Then, you weave your fingers through every other line of the dough.  This was the fun and easy part.

Then came the not fun and not easy part.  You turn the lines that were not on your fingers inside out, over top of the ones that were on your fingers, to make a flower like knot.  Raz did it once, quickly, and said, "It's easy, like this! Voila!"  I laughed and told her to let me do the rest to practice until I got the hang of it.

Some came out nice and some not so nice.  Some looked like little roses and some looked like...trampled roses.

Once we had them all ready to go, we dropped them tenderly into hot oil and let them brown.

With a fork, we pulled them out and then dropped them into hot honey/orange blossom water mix.  Some people just drizzle honey over them, which makes them too sticky and sweet.  Doing it this way, they were barely sticky at all and and just sweet enough.  We didn't measure any of this, just a whole lot of honey and about a tablespoon (maybe more) of the orange blossom water.

So, drop it in the honey mix, turn it over, and scoop it back out with the fork, allowing the excess honey to drip off.

Set them in a bowl and sprinkle them with sesame seeds.

And voila!  Greewesh!  So yummy.  Confession: I ate this entire plate by myself.  Not in one sitting...I do have some self control!

Now I have to go to the arab market and buy me one of those grooved roller cutter things.  And a non-teflon-lined pan that I can use a fork in... I hope to have this treat mastered by the time I come home for Christmas so that I can make it for everybody in the US!