🇯🇴 Jordan

Warbat bil Ashta

وربات بالقشطة · warbāt bil-‘ashṭa

Ramadan’s cream triangles — layers of butter-soaked phyllo folded over thick ashta, baked golden and drenched in rose syrup under a flurry of pistachio.

Serves makes 12

Photo to come

Ingredients

Syrup
2 cups sugar · 1 cup water · squeeze of lemon · 1 tbsp rose water
Ashta
2 cups whole milk + 2 cups whipping cream
¾ cup cornstarch · ½ cup sugar · 1 tbsp rose water
Pastry
18 sheets (450 g) phyllo, room temperature
1½ cups unsalted butter, clarified
2 tbsp crushed pistachios, to finish

Method

Simmer the syrup 10 minutes, add the rose water, and cool completely.
Whisk the ashta ingredients together cold, then cook, whisking without pause, ~10 minutes until thick; chill with plastic on its surface.
Clarify the butter, skimming the solids — that’s where the lasting crunch comes from.
Cut the phyllo stack into squares, working fast under a barely damp towel.
Set a spoonful of cold ashta in each square, fold corner-to-corner into a triangle, seal, and saturate with the butter.
Bake at 400°F ~25 minutes until deep gold; pour the cold syrup over the hot triangles and shower with pistachio.

The family table

Warbat here, shaabiyat there — baklava’s creamy cousin either way, and a fixture of the Ramadan sweets table beside qatayef. The rules are the genre’s: never stop whisking the ashta, cold syrup on hot pastry, and don’t overfill or the triangles burst. The old-style ashta starts with vinegar-split milk curds and a piece of mastic.

Yumma

Middle Eastern home cooking, organized by country. Your family’s version is the one that counts.