I’ve been stepping outside my dessert comfort zone of Western dessert lately, and it’s been fun. Earlier this week, D got hold of some Lebanese sweets. I went for the one that looked most interesting, naturally –
This is the osh el bul bul made of lightly fried and very fine stringy dough wrapped around pistachios and drizzled in sugar syrup. In Arabic, osh el bul bul apparently means ‘bird’s nest’, which the sweet indeed closely resembles. I was surprised that the osh el bul bul wasn’t as sickeningly sweet as I had expected from the shininess of the sugar syrup. In any case, the savouriness of the pistachios balanced the sweetness quite evenly The crumby bird’s nest case and the sugar syrup did make it messy to eat though!
This is the borma (chewy strings of dough twisted around chopped pine kernels and cashews): it was rather sticky to eat, but nuts were a good counter to the sweetness of the dough.
This is the asabi (crushed pine kernels and cashews mixed with sugar inside a sweet pastry): I enjoyed this one best even though it was the sweetest Lebanese dessert I’ve had. It reminded me a sweet, but soft, spring roll.
And this is the ballorieh (pistachios sandwiched between two layers of stringy dough): I’m rather sensitive to floral flavours in my food, and this was particularly strong – I can’t quite place what it was, but the dough tasted like the smell of wet wipes.
Al Israa is located at 4/32-38 Memorial Avenue, Liverpool NSW 2170.