Music!

[Peckris]

That is for you than, Peck

Thanks! I do like a bit of World Music. Is that ethnic Greek, or is it Arabic music played by Greeks?

That song comes from Crete. So it is Greek music played by Greeks

Nice! But it definitely has an Arabic feel. Mind you, Greeks and Arabs still bicker about who invented "baklaVA / paklAAva"

Don't think the Turks are Arabs! Remember the Ottoman Empire, lawrence of Arabia, etc

No, I didn't mean the Turks! (I do know my history and how Lord Byron single-handedly rescued Greece from the heavy hand of the Ottoman Empire...). It's just a matter of cuisine - there is a very 'East Mediterranean' way of eating, that extends from Greece in the west to Iran in the east, where certain delicacies are common to all, but each nation or region claims to have invented them.

from Wikipedia:

The word baklava is first attested in English in 1650,^[3] a borrowing from Ottoman Turkish باقلوا /bɑːklɑvɑː/.^[4][5] The name baklava is used in many languages with minor phonetic and spelling variations.

The origin of the name is unclear. Buell argues that the word "baklava" may come from the Mongolian root baγla- 'to tie, wrap up, pile up' composed with theTurkic verbal ending -v;^[6] baγla- itself in Mongolian is a Turkic loanword.^[7] The Armenian-Turkish linguist Sevan Nişanyan considers its oldest known forms (pre-1500) to be baklağı and baklağu, and labels it as being of Proto-Turkic origin, but without further documentation.^[8]

Though the suffix -vā might suggest a Persian origin,^[9][10] the baqla- part does not appear to be Persian.^[11] Another form of the word is also recorded in Persian, باقلبا (bāqlabā).^[12]

The Arabic name is doubtless a borrowing from Turkish,^[13] though a folk etymology, unsupported by Wehr's dictionary, connects it to Arabic بقلة /baqlah/'bean'.

History[edit]

A typical baklava, sweetened with syrup

Although the history of baklava is not well documented, there is evidence that its current form was developed in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace inIstanbul based on a Central Asian Turkic tradition of layered breads.^[14]

The tradition of layered breads by Turkic peoples in Central Asia suggests the "missing link" between the Central Asian folded or layered breads (which did not include nuts) and modern phyllo-based pastries like baklava would be the Azerbaijani dish Bakı pakhlavası, which involves layers of dough and nuts. The Uzbekpakhlava, puskal or yupka, and Tatar yoka, sweet and salty savories (boreks) prepared with 10-12 layers of dough, are other early examples of layered dough style in Turkic regions.^[13] The thin phyllo dough used today was probably developed in the kitchens of the Topkapı Palace.

The Sultan presented trays of baklava to the Janissaries every 15th of the month of Ramadan in a ceremonial procession called the Baklava Alayı.^[15]

One of the oldest known recipes for a sort of proto-baklava is Güllaç, also found in Turkish cuisine. It consists of layers of phyllo dough that are put one by one in warmed up milk with sugar. It is served with walnut and fresh pomegranate and generally eaten during Ramadan. The first known documentation of Güllaç is in a food and health manual written in 1330 that documented primarily Mongol-Turkic foods called Yinshan Zhenyao (飮膳正要), which was written by Husihui (忽思慧) who was a Turkic physician to the Mongol court of the Yuan dynasty^[6]

Other theories about baklava's origins include:

• That it dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, and was mentioned in a Mesopotamian cookbook on walnut dishes. But there is no evidence for this.
• That al-Baghdadi describes something similar to it in his 13th-century cookbook. Claudia Roden^[16] finds no evidence for it in Arab or even medieval Persian sources and suggests it arrived in the region during the Ottoman period.
• That it was a popular Byzantine dessert.^[17] Many Ottoman sweets are similar to Byzantine sweets, using dough, sesame, wheat, nuts and fruits, and some were similar to the Ottoman börek, halva, and so on.^{[citation needed]} There are some similarities between baklava and the Ancient Greek gastris (γάστρις),^[18]kopte sesamis (κοπτὴ σησαμίς), kopton (κοπτόν), or koptoplakous (κοπτοπλακοῦς).^[19] Gastris is mentioned in the Deipnosophistae^[20] and Speros Vryoniscalled it a "Byzantine favorite".^[21] But though gastris contained a filling of nuts and honey, its outer layers did not include any dough, but rather a honey and ground sesame mixture similar to modern pasteli or halva.^[22] Even so, there is strong possibility that such similarities are simply due to the natural foods of the common geography that the two empires successively ruled.

[Nick]

Seems quite appropriate at the moment...

[Peckris]

Seems quite appropriate at the moment...

Great track! Great observation!

[Accumulator]

It'll be Tammy Wynette with D-I-V-O-R-C-E next!

[Coinery]

It'll be Tammy Wynette with D-I-V-O-R-C-E next!

Billy Conolly, was surely the better version?

[davidrj]

That is for you than, Peck

Thanks! I do like a bit of World Music. Is that ethnic Greek, or is it Arabic music played by Greeks?

That song comes from Crete. So it is Greek music played by Greeks

Nice! But it definitely has an Arabic feel. Mind you, Greeks and Arabs still bicker about who invented "baklaVA / paklAAva"

Don't think the Turks are Arabs! Remember the Ottoman Empire, lawrence of Arabia, etc

No, I didn't mean the Turks! (I do know my history and how Lord Byron single-handedly rescued Greece from the heavy hand of the Ottoman Empire...). It's just a matter of cuisine - there is a very 'East Mediterranean' way of eating, that extends from Greece in the west to Iran in the east, where certain delicacies are common to all, but each nation or region claims to have invented them.

from Wikipedia:

<snip>

Thanks for that Peck, interesting! Not been to Turkey and the only Arabic country I've been to is Egypt

Well aware of the Turkish influence in the Balkans. You quickly learn in Greece that it is Greek Coffee & Greek Delight. Excellent Turkish style coffee in both Macedonia & Kosova, sadly the bits of Croatia & Albania I've been to seem to be rapidly succumbing to Starbucks & Costa

[ChKy]

song no. 1

song no 2