A sip of baklava?

I could not believe what I heard. He was asking me if I wanted to have a glass of baklava. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I’ll make a baklava cocktail with whisky.”

My first reaction was quick: What? And then I could not stop asking: but how? And why? Young bartender Onurcan Gençer was practicing for the challenges of the world’s most prestigious bartender competition World Class 50 organized by Diageo; and his first challenge in Edinburgh was to prepare a whisky cocktail using JW Gold Label Reserve. I was to be his interpreter/presenter, so I was trying to capture his ideas. With this first statement he surely managed to attract my attention. He’s been to Scotland before and he truly loved the whiskies there. He wanted to create a bond with Scotland and Turkey. That’s what he came up with.

Onurcan continued to explain: “I infuse baklava in milk, and then use this milk in the cocktail. It is like cream-based whisky liquors but much lighter, and with great depth.” He opened the fridge and brought out a jug of milk with a few limp-looking baklava squares barely visible in the bottom. I just looked sad. I was not convinced. He strained the milk and pushed it right to my nose. Unwillingly I smelled the milk-baklava infusion. To my surprise it was amazing. I kind of shouted: “It is as if I just stepped into a baklava shop in Gaziantep!” He kept mixing, shaking and finally poured his creation into a coupe glass.

I tasted it and thought at once that it deserved its glittery name: “Thousand and One Golden Layers.”
Gaziantep is a city in southeast Turkey, just north of Syria, famous for its cuisine and for having the best baklava in the world. Having written a book on Gaziantep...