Dandelion Cordial May 12, 2008

                                           

So I woke up on Friday morning to a terrifying realization: I am moving out of the country in six weeks.  I still have to call the shipping company!  Visit Rila Monastery!  Have a goodbye party at the school!  Make Tunisia hotel reservations!  LEAVE BULGARIA!  I’m about to enter a few scary, probably unemployed months in the U.S. and while there are things I will be happy to see/do/eat again, I am dreading a bit the return to the Real World, where my employment will not be based on contract, health care is a nightmare, and I have to find housing all on my own omigod.  Time to clear my head, time to take a walk.

I went up for a wander in the hills around the village and took a little bag with me to collect dandelion heads so I could make dandelion syrup, a recipe I saw on FX Cuisine that looked really interesting.  And cheap.  (Have to start cutting back - I’ll be paying insurance premiums soon!  And rent!  And…)  Apparently this is an old old recipe, and I admit I feel rather foolish for not having thought of it before.  You can put anything in a simple syrup - why not dandelion flowers?  So I collected a few handfuls, steeped them overnight, and now I’m drinking a beautiful sweet flowery ade that I only wish I had known of sooner.  And am maybe a little bit less stressed.

Dandelion Cordial

a few handfuls of dandelion heads
sugar
water
lemon juice

Remove green leaves from around flower heads - FX Cuisine suggested a knife for this, but I found it just as easy to twist them off.  Put them in a pot over high heat, with water and sugar, in equal amounts, to cover by an inch or two.  Bring to a boil, drop the heat down to low and simmer for 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and let steep overnight.  Add lemon juice (I’d say the juice of half a lemon should do for every two cups of water you used) and strain into a jar.  To serve, fill a glass halfway with the syrup, then top it off with sparkling or still water.

I’ll also proudly mention that I’ve been tagged for another award - the Arte Y Pico, from Elle’s New England Kitchen.  It says that folks who are tagged should pass on the tag, and I would love to, but I am reminded that many of the food blogs I read are the ones that are already super popular and don’t much need the boost.  So I’ll take it as a reminder that I need to pay more attention to blogs that don’t get 5000+ daily readers - because heaven knows mine doesn’t!  Thank you, Elle.

White Bean Salad with Lemon Balm, an Award, and a Conundrum May 5, 2008

A few months ago I discovered the backlog of podcasts available from the NPR show The Splendid Table, and I’ve been listening to archived episodes like it’s my job, mostly while in the kitchen.  (How cute.)  One show from a couple of years ago had a call about lemon balm - the woman had a glut of it in her garden and didn’t know what to do with it.  Lynne suggested, among other things, adding it to salads.  I filed that little piece of information away, since I didn’t expect to see it around these parts, yet, lo and behold, as friend Jessica and I were taking a walk the other day and trying to identify plants, we found… lemon balm!  I added it to a white bean salad and it was lovely.  Bright, citrusy, green, just a bit wild.  I’m still rather a zombie today after Artmospheric, but I did make myself get a little exercise to go back up to that hill for some more of this slightly addictive herb to make the dish again; it’s a great can’t-be-arsed salad that’s as full-flavored as it is healthy.  I’m going to pull a grilled cheese and not really give a recipe.  This is a chop-and-toss deal: don’t think about it too hard.

The cheese is optional, if you want it vegan, and I think next time I may add some finely diced dried apricots.  (Edit: The apricots are excellent.)  I just ate some of this with a nice slab of dark bread, and I feel happy.

                                           

Either cook up a cup of dried white beans, or drain a 15 oz can of them into a bowl.  Add the zest and juice of a lemon or two, chop up the leaves of a few sprigs of parsley, mint, and lemon balm, and add some powdered garlic.  Crumble in some sirene or fresh goat cheese, add salt and pepper to taste, drizzle with olive oil and maybe a little vinegar, and top with some thinly sliced scallion.  Spring bliss is yours.

In other news, I’ve been tagged for my first award! 

                                                                              

Many thanks go to Diva at The Sugar Bar.  It’s nice to know that people are starting to pick up on this blog after I’ve only been at it for a couple of months.  I’m passing on the love to five folks whose blogs I always get a kick out of:

Zen at Chefs Gone Wild

Annie at Bonappegeek

Nupur at One Hot Stove

Marc at No Recipes

Jen at Eat Real Butter

It’s quite possible that all of yall have already gotten this award already.  If so, you deserve it again.

Finally, I am facing a Dilemma!  I’m torn right down the middle in the decision to move to either Minneapolis or Portland (OR) in late summer/early fall.  I’ve decided I want to try cooking for a living, and I want a cheap happy city to do it in.  So if you are reading this and have a pull towards one place or another, give a shout.  I’ve heard bunches of reasons for and against both places - give me bunches more.

The Perfect Muffin: Matcha, White Chocolate, Rose Petals May 4, 2008

                                          

This weekend, I went to the Artmospheric music and art festival, where I would have had a great time save the fact that there was inescapably loud pounding electronic music playing for 20 out of every 24 hours.  I was so happy to be out in the middle of nowhere, on a stunning mountain in my favorite region of Bulgaria, but I am flabbergasted at the amount of sleep I did not get.  I returned home last night, had a cup of tea, and slept for 10 hours.  I’m still a bit hazy, so I’m just going to give you this muffin recipe and say that I don’t know how I ever lived a satisfactory life before I made these last week.  Seriously.

Matcha Muffins with White Chocolate and Rose Petals
makes 12

2 cups flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3 tablespoons matcha green tea powder
1 cup yogurt
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
petals of 10 dried rosebuds
3/4 cup white chocolate chunks

Preheat to 350F and butter a 12-cup muffin tin. In a large bowl sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and matcha powder. In a small bowl combine yogurt, oil, egg, and rosebuds. Let this sit for about 10 minutes to let the rose petals soften a bit, then pour wet into dry and mix until just barely combined. Fold in white chocolate and divide mixture evenly between muffin tin cups. Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean, being very careful not to overbake. Eat.

Carob Quinoa Waffles April 26, 2008

Well, all that talk last time about my lack of breakfast made me want some breakfast.  And here it is, Saturday - no classes, first day of Easter vacation (Orthodox churches do Easter a few weeks later) - and I’ve got a hankering for waffles.  You heard me.  A hankering.

I have only a couple of cookbooks here with me - the rest are lolling about on my parents’ bookshelf, awaiting my imminent return - and none of them has a waffle recipe, so I did a Food Blog Search and found a recipe on Nook & Pantry that looked worthwhile.  I still had some leftover quinoa, though, and some carob syrup that I found in Greece, so I figured, what the hell, I’m feeling adventurous.  Carob syrup was something I was very surprised to find - I’d always seen it powdered - but I’ve used up almost the whole bottle by just pouring a few teaspoons in a glass of milk, and I didn’t want to finish it off without having done something interesting.  So carob waffles it is! 

Carob, an ingredient often maligned because it was so frequently substituted for chocolate 20 years ago when those loopy health food nuts loved substituting everything.  (Some of them are still substituting tofu for cheese.  It’s never going to work, people.)  Now that we know that chocolate is good for you, though, carob has dropped back by the wayside, but I think it’s about time it found its own niche.  I’m not saying this is the perfect vehicle for it, but I sure liked it well enough, and I think it works. 

At the bottom I linked to a source to buy carob syrup for yourself, and also to a recipe to make it from carob powder, but you’d probably do okay just adding carob powder to a scant cup of liquid (instead of the 3/4 cup in total that the milk + yogurt yields), whisking in enough that it turns a rich brown.  I’m going to tell you now, this is some serious, substantial hippie food - but don’t worry, they’re not hockey pucks.  (Try to veganize them by leaving out the eggs, though, and they will be.)

And thank god I finally finished up that quinoa - I made way too much a few days ago.  I’m finding, though, that I love adding it to things I wouldn’t normally expect it in.  (But really, who expects quinoa yet?  It’s still got a bit of a foodies-only gloss on it that is slowly being rubbed off.)  These little seeds give a fun, not daunting, chewiness, crisping things up just a bit, in all the right places.

I topped them off with grape molasses, another little jarful I picked up in Istanbul and am still trying to use up.  (I did some serious shopping in Istanbul.  Anyone want some saffron?  I’ve got tons.)  These would be fine with cane molasses, maple syrup, fruit syrup, or even date syrup - carob and dates go well together.

Carob Quinoa Waffles
makes 4-6, depending on your waffle iron

1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup cooked quinoa (preferably a day or two old, so it’s dried out a little)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup plain yogurt or milk
1/4 cup carob syrup
2 tablespoons oil
1 egg, separated, plus 1 extra egg white
nonstick cooking spray

Heat waffle iron.  In a large bowl mix together flour, quinoa, salt, and baking soda.  In a separate bowl combine milk, yogurt, carob syrup, oil, and egg yolk, and stir well.  Pour wet into dry and mix just until it’s barely combined.  Whisk egg whites into soft peaks and fold into batter.  Cook in waffle iron according to its maker’s directions.  Top with butter, fruit, syrup, powdered sugar?

Learn more about carob

Make your own carob syrup (note - I haven’t tested this recipe)

Buy your own carob syrup

 Also: I’m serious about the saffron.  Free.  I have too much.  Leave a comment.  We’ll be in touch.

Quinoa-Potato Cakes with Tuna and a Lemon-Parsley Sauce April 23, 2008

                                        

It is an understatement to say that I am not a morning person.  I set two alarms every morning, for an hour before I have to leave the house, and I hit snooze for the next forty minutes.  I became a functioning adult on the day that I refused to sleep past 10:30 on the weekends, because I knew it would make weekdays that much harder.  I like the concept of waking up early… it just rarely happens unless brute force is applied.

This means that I never get breakfast.  I roll out of bed, wash my face, throw clothes on, and hope that there are no pillowcase marks on my forehead when I show up at school, ready to infuse young minds with knowledge.  The idea of eating something when I’m still half-asleep is really rather nauseating to me, and so if I eat hash browns, it’s in the evening, on a breakfast-for-dinner kinda night.

Of course, not eating breakfast means that I am ravenous by the time I finish teaching at 12:30, and on unrestrained days I have been known to have Doritos and a chocolate bar for lunch.  (What?  Dairy, carbs, chocolate… it’s totally well-rounded.)  Today, though, while teaching question tags -

Let me just stop here and talk about how ridiculous English is.  Here are three sentences with question tags:

You’re doing your homework, aren’t you?
He walks the dog, doesn’t he?
We ate dinner together yesterday, didn’t we?

In Bulgarian, those three question tags - “aren’t you,” “doesn’t he,” and “didn’t we” - can ALL be said using the same phrase. And which one of us has the universal language? How silly.

OK. Sorry. So, today, while teaching question tags during my last class, I was about ready to gnaw my arm off, and I was determined not to grab any junk food. I thought about some quinoa I had left over in the fridge, and that onion that desperately needed to be cut open (see previous post), and a real craving I’ve been having lately for tuna. (Yeah, I eat fish sometimes.) In Venice I learned how to make risotto cakes out of leftover risotto (throw an egg in there, make into patties, fry, top with parmesan. You’re welcome), and I thought about doing something similar with the quinoa. Deborah Madison has a great recipe for Quinoa Potato Cakes, which I always made with sweet potatoes and some chipotle, but since neither one of those was around, I figured a different variation was in order. (I have yet to cook that dish straight from the recipe.) So at this point, I’m babbling - the main idea is that I’m giving you an example of what can happen when you take a bunch of cravings and leftovers and use them to adapt a recipe that will give you a darned tasty lunch.

Yes, there’s ranch dressing mix in here.  Also, I used frozen peas, and to get the cold out of them, I just put them in a bowl, and when I drained the potatoes, I poured a little of that simmering water onto them and let them sit for a couple of minutes.

Quinoa-Potato Cakes with Tuna
makes about 12

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for frying cakes
1/2 cup finely diced onion
2 cloves garlic
1 cup cooked quinoa
3 small potatoes, peeled, cubed (about a cup), and boiled until soft
1 tablespoon ranch dressing mix
1/2 cup cooked peas
1/2 tin (or a whole one, if you’re feling bold) oil-packed tuna, drained
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs (I used panko)
1/4 cup shredded monterey jack
1/4 cup chopped parsley
ground black pepper

Heat olive oil in a pan over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until softened. Put in a large bowl (put the pan back on the heat and throw some more olive oil in there, enough to coat the bottom) with quinoa, potatoes, and ranch dresssing mix and mash until potato pieces are broken down and mixture is well-combined. Add remaining ingredients and mix well to combine. It’s going to look like the picture just above - not resembling something that will hold together easily. Grab some mixture by the palmful and press into patties. (See? It holds together fine.) Put 3-4 cakes at a time into the hot oil, careful not to crowd the pan, and let cook for at least 3 minutes before turning and cooking the other side. Serve with…

Lemon-Parsley Sauce

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 cup water or mild broth
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Heat olive oil in a small pan over medium high (almost high) heat. Add flour and start whisking. When flour turns a few shades darker add lemon juice and water. Let this reduce by half, remove from heat, and add lemon zest and parsley.

Kitchen Confessions April 23, 2008

                                                      

 

Time to use this onion.

Time to clean that window, too.

The Final Word on Grilled Cheese April 20, 2008

I know.  You can make grilled cheese.  You don’t need a recipe.  Don’t worry, I won’t give you one.  Foods as simple as this do not need protracted, highfalutin measurements.  We all survived on grilled cheese and ramen freshman year of college, and even if you can’t cook anything, you can cook grilled cheese.  Right?  Right.

So why am I posting about this?  Because too many people either overdo or underdo grilled cheese.  There are two schools of thought, here - the Kraft slices on squooshy supermarket bread, and the fig-and-brie on artisan pesto loaf.  Well, I think you’re both crazy.  Kraft slices are not cheese, they are plastic.  (Disagree?  Write your own blog.)  You could probably convince me on the figs, but when I’m talking about grilled cheese, I’m talking about Tuesday night dinner-snack, and I’d rather take the pesto loaf into work the next day to impress my colleagues.  Here’s what I do.  It’s what you should do, too.

                                   

Take two slices of decent bread.  Butter one, just on the inside.  You’re already going to have fat in the pan - let’s not overdo it by buttering the outside, too.  Then put down a thin layer of mustard.  I like stone-ground, but whatever you have is fine.  Then add a little bit of shredded cheese - Swiss, Gruyere, some good white cheddar?  If it’s shredded it will melt much more easily and evenly than if you just slice it off the block, and you’ll have more control over how much you use, too.  You’ll want it to melt quickly, because you’re not going to have this sandwich on the heat for very long.  Don’t pile this up, either - you don’t want gobs of cheese oozing out.  Oozing cheese is good in a casserole, not so good running down the back of your hand.  Next put down a couple of slices of tomato with the seed goop removed.  This will make a huge difference in the sloppiness factor.  Now you can, if you like, add a little parmesan or garlic powder (no, I don’t have any problems with garlic powder, as long as you’re not trying to substitute it for real garlic), but don’t get crazy.  Cover it up with just a little more shredded cheese, then close the sandwich.

Heat butter and maybe a little olive oil in a pan to medium high.  When a drop of water sizzles lightly in the pan, put the sandwich in and cover.  This will keep the heat in to melt the cheese.  Check on it every minute or so, and when it’s nicely browned on the bottom, flip it and cook, uncovered, until browned on the other side.  Turn it out onto a cutting board.  You’ve got to be decisive about cutting this beautiful thing - position a big knife over the center and whack it straight down.  This will keep the bread from sliding all over the melted cheese.  Eat it and then go make yourself another one.

Homemade Nettle Pasta April 15, 2008

When I was little, I loved to go tramping through the woods around my house to splash in the creek, blaze new trails along the blackberry briars, and see what forest treats I could eat.  I knew of two things to look for: wild carrots and wild onions, and I searched diligently for as much of these as I could.  I would arrive at the back door while my mom was cooking dinner and proudly present her with my contribution to the evening’s meal.  The first couple of times it was probably cute, but after that, the novelty wore off, and, although I have recently been reassured of her occasional use of my foraging treasures, I’m sure lots of onion grass ended up in the compost.

In college I tried to develop a sincere interest in foraging, but my fear of misidentification and eventual pokeweed-induced death kept me from getting out there and harvesting free salad greens.  I do remember laughing out loud when I saw dandelion greens packed in bags at the chichi health food store and sold for $4 a pop.  Those, I’m not afraid of misidentifying.

Living in Bulgaria has reminded me that I can eat lots of things growing around - wild dock is all over the place, and it’s often used in salads or in place of spinach in banitsa.  I’ve made an addictive pesto with wild garlic, and last year a friend presented me with a bagful of pungent mushrooms that she’d collected earlier that day.  (Unfortunately they were too pungent for my taste, and I had to put them outside to turn back into humus.)  Looking up ideas for dock, I stumbled on Sunny Savage’s website, Wild Food Plants, and I spent a good hour wandering around it.  She’s got lots of videos on edible plant identification and methods of cooking, and I’m excited enough that I’m going to make an effort to take some classes on the subject when I get back to the U.S.  I’ve really enjoyed discovering these new-to-me foods, and loved learning what I can do with them.

One thing Sunny talked about was making your own superfoods.  If you’ve been within 50 feet of a health food store in the past five years, you know that superfoods are strange green powders sold for way too much money in the supplements section.  You can make your own for free, simply by drying wild greens and buzzing them up in a spice grinder.  I had some powdered nettle on hand (I bought it last year because I didn’t know what the Bulgarian word was on the packet, so I figured I’d drop fifty cents, take it home with me, and look it up in the dictionary.  I have acquired a lot of things this way - maybe too many) and I’m still in use-it-don’t-lose-it mode, so I decided to whip together the homemade pasta recipe on her website.  Why not?  Seriously easy - an hour from measuring to eating, and even though I halved the receipe for myself (the full measurements are given below), I have plenty of pasta drying around my kitchen, for future use.  And no, I don’t have a pasta maker.  You’ve just got to roll the dough as thin as you can.  Even thinner than I did - you can tell in the picture that it’s still on the portly side.

Nettle Pasta

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered nettle or other wild greens
2 eggs
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons salt

In mixing bowl thoroughly mix flour and nettle powder. Make a well in the center and mix in remaining ingredients, working from the center, using your fingers. Knead until dough comes together, adding water by the tablespoon if necessary. Roll into ball and let dough rest, loosely covered, for at least 30 minutes. Roll out dough as thinly as possible and cut into pasta. (I used a pizza cutter.)

If you’re going to cook the pasta now, bring water, olive oil and salt to a rolling boil and submerge pasta for roughly 9 minutes. Strain and serve immediately. (I just tossed it with some butter, black pepper, and parmesan.) If you’re not going to eat it right away, hang it to dry!

Chapatis April 13, 2008

                                            

I first learned to eat with my hands from my 10th-grade history teacher.  He had traveled in India during college and he had a few of us over one evening for some Indian food, which he taught us to eat properly.  We got huge pieces of flatbread, which we were told to pile up with curries.  I later learned that this is the South Indian way of doing things, food wrapped up in giant dosas - a flatbread that is more like a crepe, compared to what you’ll find as you head north, where batters become doughs and are fried with oil, (like parathas), cooked on a dry skillet (chapatis), or oven-baked (naan).  All of these are part of the range of South Asian breads called roti. 

Then he gave us rules for eating with our hands.  First, of course, get rid of those pesky forks.  Second, and most important, hygenically speaking: only use your right hand to touch food.  (You’ll find this to be the case in any country without toilet paper, because your left hand takes care of that.  This also means that you don’t pass food with your left hand, unless your right one is covered in vindaloo, don’t offer your left hand to shake, and don’t give money with your left hand unless you really want to insult someone.)  Third, there is some etiquette involved in grabbing chunks of food with your bare mitts:  it’s bad form for those spicy lentils to drip below your second knuckle, and bread really is used as a utensil, so it forms something of a barrier between you and that korma.  Fourth, it’s okay to lick your fingers.  Dig in.

It took me a stupidly long time to realize that not only could I cook a decent curry without having to call for takeout, but that making the bread to eat it with was also not rocket science.  About a year ago, I started making my own flour tortillas (there is one Mexican restaurant in Sofia, and it’s awful, so I did what I had to do), and, after reading up on chapati recipes, I realized that Indian flatbread and Mexican flatbread were not really that different.  To top it off, chapatis are just about the easiest thing ever to make.  I don’t even measure anymore.  The key is to cook them over really high heat: the lower the heat, the longer they have to cook, and the longer they cook, the crispier they get, and the crispier they get, the harder they are to wrap around your cumin potatoes.  I use some oil in mine, although I have been reminded by Sid (thank you, Sid!) that traditionally, they are made without.  The directions here are rather lax, because this is not a complicated process: flour, grease, and water, fried.  So don’t stress about it.  If you like, you can add some black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, finely choped onion, or finely chopped garlic (my favorite).  Just stir them in with the flours, before you add the water.

Chapatis
makes about 12

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oil, plus more for the pan
water

In a medium bowl sift together flours and salt. Add oil and mix well. Add just enough water to make the dough come together - this is not going to be flaky biscuit dough, but it won’t be a batter either, because you’ll have to roll it out. Once water has been incorporated, knead the dough a bit into a ball and let sit for a few minutes while the pan heats.

 Heat a drizzle of oil in a frying pan over high heat.  Take a knob of dough - say, 1/8 cup - and work it into a ball.  On a well-floured surface, roll it out into a circle that’s as thin as you can make it, turning and flipping it often to keep it from sticking to the work surface.  When you hold it up and can see light coming through it, it’s thin enough.  Lay it in the hot pan and cook just long enough to brown nicely, then flip and cook the other side, just as quickly.  Serve with your favorite curry, or just eat them as they come out of the pan - a highly probable scenario if you’ve put garlic in there.  Yum.

Strawberry Goat Cheese Banitsa with Pecans April 10, 2008

In Bulgaria we’ve got this thing called banitsa.

If you’ve ever been here, that last sentence just made you exhale like Homer Simpson at Krusty Burger. Banitsa is the ideal savory pastry. It’s similar to Greek spanikopita or Turkish byurek, but dough leaves called kori (a little thicker than phyllo) and the addition of Bulgarian sirene make this arguably one of the world’s best things to wake up to. There are a hundred variations but at its most common, it’s white cheese, eggs, and yogurt mixed together, rolled into kori sheets, made into a coil, then baked. You can add spinach, leeks, red bell pepper, pretty much anything you like. There are sweet banitsas, too, more often made in the colder months, with walnuts, sugar, and pumpkin or apples instead of cheese. Time spent in any Bulgarian city is practically uncountable if you haven’t found the best banitsa stand in town, and if you go to the village - you’ve got to find out which grandma’s oven draws the crowds.

Since I’m not really into publishing any straightforward traditional Bulgarian recipes, my neo-Bulgo twist on banitsa this week is one with sweetened cheese, strawberry jam, and an excuse to use up the last shipment of pecans from back home. (You could also use almonds or walnuts.) Instead of being formed into a coil, it’s layered, which dresses it up a bit and makes it look prettier when cut, but this is still a rather rustic dish. Again, if you aren’t anywhere near a Bulgarian grocery, you can use goat cheese instead of the sirene, and phyllo instead of the kori. Just make sure to do the usual phyllo treatment of brushing the layers with butter so that they don’t get dried out when cooking. You may have to trim the dough to fit your baking pan, which you can do it as you go - lay the whole sheets down in the pan, trim by running a very sharp knife along the edges, then cover with filling.

Strawberry Goat Cheese Banitsa with Pecans
makes about 16-20 squares

500 grams sirene (preferably dunavia) or 1 pound goat cheese
4 eggs
200 grams plain yogurt (about a cup)
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
grated zest of 2 oranges
2 1/4 cups roughly chopped pecans
1 package banitsa or phyllo dough
1 cup strawberry jam
granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400F. Heavily grease a 13″x9″ baking dish and set aside. In a large bowl mix together cheese, 3 eggs, and yogurt, blending until as smooth as possible. Sift in sugar, flour, and baking soda, and stir to combine. Add orange zest and 2 cups pecans, mix, and set aside.

Unroll banitsa dough and put 2-3 layers in the bottom of prepared baking dish. Spread with a quarter of the cheese mixture. Put down another 2 layers of banitsa dough and another quarter of the cheese mixture. Put down 2 more layers of dough, then spread all of the jam on. 2 more layers of dough, another quarter of the cheese, 2 more layers of dough, top off the cheese, 2 final dough layers. Whisk the remaining egg in a bowl and, using fingers or a pastry brush, coat top of banitsa with egg. (You’ll have a lot of egg left over. Mini-omelet?) Sprinkle with a little granulated sugar and remaining 1/2 cup pecans. Bake 30 minutes or until top is golden brown and edges are bubbling. Wait 10 minutes before cutting to serve.