My mom makes the most amazing baklava that everyone goes crazy over, and Anita (my roomie) loves to bake, both being a bad combination for me. Anita finally got the recipe from my mom, which involves making the sinfully sweet syrup, making the nuts, preparing the phyllo dough, etc. Now keep in mind that this is being translated from Arabic to English. My mom tells me the nut combination is equal parts almonds, walnuts, and filberts. Hence me and Anita embark on finding the ingredients to make the baklava. Got the ingredients to make the syrup (check), find the right phyllo dough (check), get the almonds (check), get the walnuts (check)... but where to find the filberts? Now mind you, I've never heard of filbert nuts, but figure I'm just ignorant and everyone knows what they are, but we keep looking for these filbert nuts everywhere and can't find them.

Many supermarkets were searched, but to no avail. It got so bad that Anita even went ahead and made a tray using just the almonds and walnuts, but that didn't seem to work out so well. It got to the point that Anita almost gave up on the whole baklava making, until one fateful day when we're with Tracy (the wonder chef), and we recounted to her our dilemma, which she then kindly informs us that the hazelnut is part of the filbert family.

Needless to say, we were both speechless. Do you know how many times we passed hazelnuts everywhere we went? I call my mom and ask her why she didn't tell me that filbert nuts were simply known as hazelnuts, and she was as surprised as I was. Apparently at the mid east grocer and amongst fellow foreigners, they all refer to hazelnuts as filberts. Foreigners are funny. So in any case, we go to get some filberts/hazelnuts, and lo and behold what do we find at the same supermarket we scourged for filberts to begin with?