Name: Znoud el Sit
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Lebanese
Ingredients: 250 g caster sugar; 150 ml water; 1 tbsp lemon juice; 1 tbsp orange blossom water; 400 ml double cream; 3 tbsp cornflour; 2 tbsp caster sugar; 1 tbsp rose water; 10 sheets filo pastry; 2 tbsp plain flour mixed with 2 tbsp water, for sealing; 800 ml sunflower oil; 50 g pistachios, chopped

Znoud el Sit

Filo fingers filled with thick cream, fried and dropped straight into cold syrup. The name means "the lady's upper arms", which tells you the shape they are aiming for.

50 min total Serves 8 servings Medium

Znoud el Sit, in preparation
Photograph credit: زنود الست (2) by Mohammed Qays Kazem · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence

The Method for Znoud el Sit

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Boil the sugar, water and lemon 8 minutes to a syrup that coats a spoon. Stir in the orange blossom water off the heat and chill until properly cold.
Whisk the cornflour into a little of the cream until smooth, then heat the rest with the sugar. Add the slurry and cook, stirring, until very thick — about 4 minutes. Stir in the rose water, cool and chill.
Cut each filo sheet into two rectangles, keeping the stack under a damp cloth.
Pipe a finger of cold cream across the short edge, fold both long sides in, and roll up tightly. Seal the flap with flour paste.
Heat the oil to 180°C / 355°F. Fry four at a time, 2 to 3 minutes, turning, until blistered and pale gold.
Lift straight from the oil into the cold syrup for 30 seconds, turning once.
Lift out onto a rack, scatter with pistachios and serve warm.

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What Can Go Wrong

Hot pastry, cold syrup. The other way round makes them soggy.
Thirty seconds in the syrup, no longer.
The cream must be properly set or it escapes into the oil.

A Little Background

Hot pastry into cold syrup, never the other way round. The temperature difference makes the pastry take up exactly a coating of syrup and then stop, so it stays crisp; if the syrup is warm the filo drinks it up and collapses into something soggy within a minute. So the syrup is made first and chilled properly. The cream also needs to be thick enough to hold a shape when rolled — a loose filling squeezes out of both ends in the pan and burns in the oil.

On the Table Alongside

Arabic coffee · Mint tea · A bowl of fresh fruit

Storing Leftovers

Best within the hour. Refrigerated for 2 days, though the pastry softens. Do not freeze filled.

The Numbers per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Vegetarian