Diple dough usually contains chopped nuts.
Diples, also called triples, is a Greek dessert made from fried puff pastry. The flattened, fried dough is covered in a citrus-flavored syrup and topped with toasted sesame seeds. While simple diples can come in any shape, experienced dippers can make them into a variety of decorative shapes, such as tubes or rosettes. This dish is usually made with a citrus and sugar syrup, but the traditional version uses honey.
The diet dough is stretched before frying. When fried, it curls and bubbles, becoming crispy. Some diples are designed to look like blooming flowers, while others resemble something more like a potato chip or rolled taco with no filling.
In its less decorative form, this dessert closely resembles the deep-fried wonton sheets served in many Chinese restaurants, but it generally has fewer lumps and bubbles. Done without the added visual flair, they look a lot like square tiles. The syrup coating gives these crunchy treats a slight sheen.
The dough used to make sauces is usually made with eggs, milk, and wheat flour, along with flavoring agents used to give them the distinctive flavor of citrus and spices. Often the dough also contains chopped nuts. The raciones are usually served cold a day or two after frying. They are rarely eaten fresh. Since this crispy dough dish is usually topped with a honey-based syrup, it’s sometimes compared to baklava, a delicacy made with special sheet dough and honey, but diples are much simpler to make.
Some recipes include lemon zest as part of the batter mix, which gives the batter a citrus flavor. Other recipes leave the citrus out of the dough, but call for the zest to be included in the syrup that covers the sauces. Others call for citrus in both the batter and the syrup, giving the dish a stronger citrus flavor overall.
Diples puff pastry is usually seasoned with ouzo, a common alcoholic drink in Greece. Ouzo is a flavored spirit, a spiced liquor made by distilling spiced alcohol, usually aniseed, but can also include other spices such as cloves and cinnamon. The alcohol used for ouzo is usually made from grape skins. Authentic ouzo is only made in Greece. Less commonly, it is made with a drink called Mataxa cognac, which is a special blend of cognac and wine.