#Assyrian cuisine

[gemsofgreece]

Hey, question: what are your thoughts on baklava? Is it turkish or greek?

It's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of facts and the lack of them. The answer to this is normally an one-liner but I would like to give some context because there are foreign people out there who don't understand these feuds.

The one-liner is that the origins of the baklava are unknown.

Now the context: It is funny that what you will constantly hear is the "turkish vs greek" discourse when in actuality baklava is a traditional pastry in at least a dozen more countries in the Balkans, the Middle East and South Caucasus. The reason the discourse always zooms in in these two countries is because of their historically tense relations, which makes nationalists from these places channel their frustrations even in the pettiest of topics. Another reason is that this is a region which has nurtured numerous multi-ethnic empires but Turkey and Greece are the countries which are typically the most connected to these imperial pasts.

We do not know who the cook who came up with the baklava in the Ottoman empire was or to which of the various ethnic communities of the empire they belonged. We know for a fact that baklava's name is Turkish because this was the official language of the empire. Some turkish nationalists treat the turkish name as proof but this is not a good enough reasoning in an imperial context because everything is almost always popularised via the first language of an empire. With the same reasoning, we could say that since the basis of the baklava is the phyllo (filo) dough which is a Greek word, then baklava is a turkish sweet that is half-Greek because it has a Greek basis? These things are unserious.

We also do not know whether that first cook in the Ottoman Empire created the pastry out of thin air or was heavily inspired or was copying a pastry that was already a known delicacy in these regions before the establishment of the Ottoman Empire. Actually, we know that there was a suspiciously way too similar pastry in the Byzantine Empire, named "koptoplakýs¨, a Greek name corresponding to the official language of the Byzantine Empire. We still don´t know if koptoplakys was purely a Greek recipe or it was first made by one of the other Byzantine ethnic groups or it was also inspired by something else prior to it. Several speculations place the origins of baklava and that of koptoplakys to a variety of regions, such as Ancient Greece, Armenia, the Assyrian Empire and more.

The point is that since all these regions of the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East were parts of empires, various ethnicities cohabitating in the same place, in the same ecosystem with the same produce, even if this coexistence was not exactly dreamy, it is natural that all these people pretty much ate similar or the same foods and such foods with "controversial" origins are genuinely part of their culinary heritage. There's no "stealing" when it comes to regular everyday things massively consumed by people living together. It's a pastry. It's not some sacred, religious or national symbol. It's a pastry, traditional and with historical presence throughout most of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Like Farya Faraji correctly says, if anything, the differences were regional and not national, since nation states are a very recent development in world history. Meaning, all these countries make the baklava but you may notice slight differentiations in each country / region's version. The standard Turkish baklava is made with pistachios. The standard Greek baklava is made with walnuts. A baklava I had in Montenegro had a lot of lemon zest in it, which definitely is not a thing in Greece. Spices can vary too.

Also, sometimes there is so much discourse about dishes with the same name when in fact the dishes are not even the same. For example, turkish and greek moussakas, another huge discourse, are literally two different dishes!

Turkish mussaka:

Greek mussaka:

(Needless to say various types of mussakas are present throughout the aforementioned regions as well, again.)

"Yes but the similarities" the similarities can be found in literally all neighbouring regions in the world, let alone in places where different ethnicities have been crammed upon each other in empires for centuries. It's inescapable and you sometimes merge so much you cannot tell who started what. (Unless in cases when we DO know thanks to documented history. Then it's a HUGE no-no to confuse or conflate different neighbouring cultures. This is often very important when it comes to actually serious things like languages, religions, historical incidents instead of... nuts and doughs.)

If you are concerned what you should define it as, simply say "I'm having an x style baklava", x being whichever nation you're getting the pastry or the recipe from. Hope that helped.

[mariacallous]

My great-aunt Victoria (Toya) Levy was an incredible woman. Born in Baghdad in 1922, she moved to Israel with her husband in 1950 to start a new life. They lived in a tiny house surrounded by fruit trees that they planted in the small town of Yavneh, where Toya dedicated her life to helping children from broken families.

She was an amazing cook — and a generous one, too. Shortly after we got married, my husband and I spent a day with her to learn the secrets of Iraqi Jewish cooking from the best.

That day, Toya taught us how to make t’beet, a Shabbat dish of stuffed chicken with rice cooked overnight, and kubbeh batata: potato fritters stuffed with ground beef. In her tiny kitchen, she also taught us to make meatballs in a dried apricot and tomato sauce. Of all the dishes, this was the only one that my grandmother never made and so I was not familiar with it. Yet its flavors stuck with me. The simple ingredients — sour dried apricots, tomato, lemon juice, raisins and just a few spices — somehow made a dish much greater than the sum of its parts. The meatballs were so tender and rich, and the sauce was sweet and sour, a combination that Iraqi Jews love.

My great-aunt Toya passed away years ago. I had somehow forgotten this wonderful recipe and when I tried to research the dish, I found different versions of it in almost every Iraqi and Iraqi Jewish cookbook I searched in. The dish was called mishmishiya or kofta mishmishiya (“mishmish” means apricot in both Arabic and Hebrew), ingryieh (a name that I saw only in a Jewish cookbook) or margat hamidh-Hilu. Interestingly, all the Jewish versions included meatballs, while Islamic recipes used stew meat. I assume this had to do with the cost of ingredients and the fact that most Jewish recipes were written by Iraqi Jews who moved to Israel, where stew meat was much more expensive than ground beef. 

According to Nawal Nasrallah’s “Delights From the Garden of Eden,” which researches the ancient cuisine of Iraq, the roots of this stew can be traced back to the Babylonian and Assyrian days (19th-6th centuries B.C.). A similar recipe, called mishmishiya, is also documented in Al-Baghdadi’s book “Kitab al Tabikh” from Medieval Baghdad. It calls for fresh apricots of a sour variety. Back then, of course, tomatoes from the New World were not available and, in fact, the original mishmishiya was also known as the “white stew.” Since Jews were living in Iraq from the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C., I feel a real connection to this humble stew’s long history.

Of all the recipes I found, my great-aunt Toya’s version is the best. Her apricot meatballs have become a family favorite; the 2,000-year-old dish from worlds away lives on, now with our kids. 

Dried apricots are available all year long, but I still think this dish is most suitable for a summer dinner. The apricots, with their bright color and flavor, mirror sunny summer days, not to mention the fact that this easy and fast recipe is perfect for those of us who want to spend as little time as possible over the stove when temperatures outside are soaring.

Notes: 

The recipe calls for dried apricots with no added sugar. They are available at specialty supermarkets such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. If you’re using sweetened dried apricots, reduce the sugar in the sauce to 2 teaspoons.

The original recipe included raisins in the sauce, which I chose to omit, but you can add those for extra sweetness.

Store the cooked meatballs in a sealed container in the fridge for up to four days.

[fastrepaircaree]

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[barryduncan]

Green Lentils and Rice Assyrian Style

Middle Eastern cuisine is known for its straightforward rice, caramelized onion, and lentil dish.

[metsov]

Hey I heard about the Hagia Sophia thing and as someone who's never been to Turkey I don't know much about the significance of the building other than it was originally built as a church but made into a mosque after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople? How do the Turkish people feel about it being turned into a mosque? Cause honestly as a Muslim myself I was quite shocked when i heard about it. I think it's best left as a musuem. It may cause unhappiness among the non-muslims I feel?

Hi :) thank you so much for this question, I really hope I can do it justice!

In brief - the building has quite the history (the magic of Istanbul and her people) but really this debate has very little do with that history. The conversations we’re seeing that are focusing on when it was a church, when it was a mosque, how the deed was signed, blah blah blah - they are simplistic and they are distracting.

The Republic of Turkey was and is dependent on an incredibly violent national identity. This is as true for the secular old guard Kemalists as it is for the religious Turks. They have a common “enemy” in the non-Turk because political figures for several centuries have carefully constructed an “us-versus-them” narrative that constantly proclaims that the Turkish state and the Turkish identity are at risk and those pesky minorities are to blame. If you are familiar with American politics there are some interesting parallels with that sort of discourse! The construction of the Republic of Turkey and the national identity of Turkey would not have been possible without violence, genocide, and Turkification. Understanding the Turkish state and the symbolism of this gesture means understanding the violence and discrimination of Armenian, Assyrian, Kurdish, Jewish, Laz, Greek, and even Arab people which occurred for centuries and is occurring to this very day. This sort of information is noticeably absent from Turkish sources (as well as any works by historians and authors that have been paid by the Turkish state - and how gross is it that a country has to literally fund propaganda textbooks?! If you’d like a list of these authors I can provide one.) 

“With the foundation of the Republic, the “state” itself has written a history, or perhaps, to put it more accurately, has invented a history, and drawn red lines around it.” 

That’s a quote from the book “1915: Armenian Genocide” written by Hasan Cemal who is the grandson of Cemal Paşa, one of the men who planned and executed the Armenian genocide. This book is not a study of the past, rather it is the personal journey of Hasan Cemal as he sought to learn about and understand the plight of Armenians in modern-day Turkey. I highly recommend it! 

Understanding the symbolism of this move requires an understanding of the history and the present-day plight of minorities in Turkey (some recommended reads: Trauma and Resilience: Armenians in Turkey - Hidden, not hidden, and no longer hidden by Raffi Bedrosyan, In the Ruins: The 1909 Massacres of Armenians in Adana, Turkey by Zabel Yesayan, Two Close Peoples Two Distant Neighbours by Hrant Dink or any articles by Hrant Dink, anything by Taner Akçam, My Grandmother: A Memoir by Fethiye Çetin, and fiction books about the Armenian genocide like The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian and Orhan’s Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian!) I know that these are all books, and some of them quite long, but I wanted to mention them. There are lots of great articles out on the web, too!

Many are now arguing that this ruling won’t change much - visitors will still be allowed in the Hagia Sophia and thus it will still be public. This argument is so simplistic and demonstrates no understanding of the history of Turkification and erasure of minorities in Turkey. I myself have stumbled upon Greek churches in Turkey (mostly in and around the provinces of İzmir and Balıkesir) that were either in complete disarray or had been converted into completely random things (one was a museum for children’s toys). Arguments that this happens to Muslim communities in other parts of the world does NOT negate the fact that the treatment of Christians and other minorities in Turkey is wrong and amounts to a humanitarian crisis. On a wider scale, Turkey has a long history of destroying or repurposing the structures of ethnic and religious minorities and erasing their contributions to history, culture, art, cuisine, literature, etc. This is a continuation of the massacres and genocides of people that are indigenous to these lands. Many parallels could be made here... the erasure of Palestinian heritage and culture perpetuates their suffering, the forced assimilation and cultural erasure of Indigenous peoples in North America perpetuates their suffering. The Turkish Republic relies on the continued erasure of its minorities (example: for decades it denied the existence of Kurdish people, referring to them as “mountain Turks” with funny accents... meanwhile it was illegal to speak Kurdish or engage in Kurdish cultural practices and many Kurds faced incredibly violent persecution simply for existing). The erasure of minorities is not unique to Turkey, but it is the heart of the issue when we talk about the Hagia Sophia’s conversion to a mosque.

Some things I would recommend reading up on if you’d like to learn more about the topic of cultural erasure and perpetuation of Turkish hegemony in Turkey:

-the Armenian city of Ani

-the burning of Smyrna

-Turkey’s incursion into Northern Syria (which has disproportionately impacted Kurds and Christians)

-the Turkish government’s moves to impede cross-cultural dialogue between Armenians and Turks, even kicking a delegation of Armenians out of the country illegally (happened in Kars in the early 2000s, mentioned in the Hasan Cemal book)

This is a pretty decent article that touches on the topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/01/hagia-sophia-erdogan-erase-turkeys-christian-past/

The Hagia Sophia is a wonder of the world. Museum status brought everyone together to admire the structure just as she is. It is a source of contention in its present-day use as a place of worship, but it is a shared treasure when it is a museum that belongs to humanity. Cheesy lol I know, but both Turkey and the world need more places that can bring people together like the Hagia Sophia has as a museum!

I feel like I’m all over the place lol here but I should also mention that not only does Turkey engage in the erasure of ethnic and religious minorities, it openly celebrates the violence perpetrated against these people. There are streets, schools, and parks named after the engineers of the Armenian genocide. Can you imagine a school in Germany named “Adolf Hitler Elementary School”? Reconciliation will not become a reality until the suffering of ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey is recognized and their pain is acknowledged.

In his analysis titled “Nowruz, Kemalism and Religion” (Taraf, March 21, 2012), Ahmet Altan pointed out that even though in theory it is not possible for the religion of Islam to converge with nationalism, there was a shared nationalist and statist mentality between Kemalists and religious Muslims in Turkey: “The greatest and most horrific victory of Kemalism was to be able to inject the poison of nationalism to the veins of religious people. 

This is from Şahin Alpay’s article “Where are the roots of Islamist Kemalism?” which explores the construction of Turkish national identity and how it exists despite the cognitive dissonance of religious Turks.

Here is an article which talks about the Islamic Society of North America’s condemnation of the move to convert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque: https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/07/14/islamic-society-of-north-america-condemns-turkeys-conversion-of-hagia-sophia/

Also, the debate over the conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque has been going on for years! Funny enough, it tends to resurface when there are pressing sociopolitical issues that Turkish politicians don’t want to talk about (a failing economy...... the government’s poor response to COVID-19..... take your pick lol) or an election is coming up. It’s truly a disservice to Turkish people to reignite the fires of this debate now. Turkish people of all religious and political affiliations are losing their jobs and struggling to put food on the table - the storm that Hagia Sophia has created is very conveniently masking that. 

Some articles about the current economic crisis:

https://ahvalnews.com/turkey-debt/turkish-economy-headed-towards-further-crisis-under-unorthodox-management

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/07/turkey-foreign-investors-flee-ankaras-isolation-grows.html

I want to end this on a better note - I love Turkey and I believe in Turkey. I know that reconciliation is possible and that dialogue can lead to a better Turkey for everyone. 

[balkanfoodking92]

Tripe is eaten in many parts of the world.Tripe soup is made in many varieties in the Eastern European cuisine. Tripe dishes include:

Andouille — French poached, boiled and smoked cold tripe sausage

Andouillette — French grilling sausage including beef tripe and pork

Babat — Indonesian spicy beef tripe dish, could be fried with spices or served as soup as soto babat (tripe soto)

Bak kut teh — A Chinese herbal soup popularly served in Malaysia and Singapore with pork tripe, meat and ribs.

Bao du — Chinese quick-boiled beef or lamb tripe

Breakfast sausages — Most commercially produced sausages in the United Statescontain pork and beef tripe as filler

Bumbar — A Bosnian dish where the tripe is stuffed with other beef parts

Butifarra/Botifarra — Colombian or Catalansausage

Caldume — a Sicilian stew or soup

Callos — Spanish tripe dish cooked with chickpea, chorizo and paprika

Cau-cau — Peruvian stew of cow tripe, potatoes, mint, and other spices and vegetables

Chakna — Indian spicy stew of goat tripe and other animal parts

Ciorbă de burtă — Romanian special soup with cream and garlic

Cow foot soup — Belize — Seasoned, tenderly cook cow tripe and foot, aromatic and ground vegetables with macaroni in a rich glutinous soup.

Dobrada — Portuguese tripe dish usually made with white butterbeans, carrots and chouriço served with white rice.

Dršťkovka (dršťková polévka) — Czechgoulash-like tripe soup

Fasulia bil karsha — Libyan kidney bean soup with tripe

Fried Tripe Sandwich – Popular in St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Držková — Slovak tripe soup (držková polievka)

Dulot or dulet — Eritrean and Ethiopian tripe and entrail stir-fry, containing finely chopped tripe, liver and ground beef, lamb or goat fried in clarified and spiced butter, with garlic, parsley and berbere

Ebyenda or byenda — word for tripe in some Bantu languages of Uganda, tripe may be stewed, but is especially popular when cooked with matooke as a breakfast dish

Fileki or špek-fileki — Croatian tripe soup

Flaczki or flaki — Polish soup, with marjoram

Fuqi feipian or 夫妻肺片— spicy and "numbing" (麻) Chinese cold dish made from various types of beef offal, nowadays mainly thinly sliced tendon, tripe and sometimes tongue

Gopchang jeongol - a spicy Korean stew or casserole made by boiling beef tripe, vegetables, and seasonings in beef broth

Goto - Filipino gruel with tripe.

Guatitas — Ecuadorian and Chilean tripe stew, often served with peanut sauce in Ecuador



Gulai babat, tripe prepared in a type of curry

Gulai babat — Indonesian Minang tripe curry

Guru — Zimbabwean name for tripe, normally eaten as relish with sadza

Haggis — Scottish traditional dish made of a sheep's stomach stuffed with oatmeal and the minced heart, liver and lungs of a sheep. The stomach is used only as a vessel for the stuffing and is not eaten.

İşkembe çorbası — Turkish tripe soup with garlic, lemon, and spices

Kare-kare — Filipino oxtail-peanut stew which may include tripe

Kersha (Arabic Egyptian: كرشة ) — Egyptiantripe stew with Chickpea and tomato sauce.

"Kirxa" - In Malta this is popular traditional dish stewed in curry.

Khash — In Armenia, this popular winter soup is made of boiled beef tendon and honeycomb tripe, and served with garlic and lavash bread.

Kista — Assyrian cooked traditionally in a stew and stuffed with soft rice, part of a major dish known as pacha in Assyrian.

Laray — Curried tripe dish popular in Afghanistan and in the northern region of Pakistan. Eaten with naan/roti.

Lampredotto — Florentine abomasum-tripe dish, often eaten in sandwiches with green sauce and hot sauce

Mala Mogodu — South African cuisine — popular tripe dish, often eaten at dinner time as a stew with hot pap

Matumbo — Kenyan cuisine — tripe dish, often eaten as a stew with various accompaniments

Mutura Kenyan cuisine-tripe sausage, stuffed with blood, organ and other meat, roasted

Menudo — Mexican tripe and hominy stew

Mondongo — Latin American and Caribbeantripe, vegetable, and herb soup

Motsu — Japanese tripe served either simmered or in nabemono, such as Motsunabe

Mumbar beef or sheep tripe stuffed with rice, typical dish in Adana in southern Turkey

Niubie (Chinese: 牛瘪) A kind of Chinese huoguo, popular in the Qiandongnanprefecture of Guizhou province in southwest China and traditionally eaten by the Dong and Miao peoples, the dish includes the stomach and small intestine of cattle. Bile from the gall bladder and the half-digested contents of the stomach give the dish a unique, slightly bitter flavour. It can also be made with the offal of a goat, which is called yangbie (Chinese: 羊瘪).

Pacal — Hungarian spicy meal made of tripe, similar to pörkölt

Pacha — Iraqi and Assyrian cuisine, tripe and intestines stuffed with garlic rice and meat

Packet and Tripe— Irish meal which is when tripe is boiled in water, then strained off and then simmered in a pot with milk, onions, salt and pepper. Served hot with cottage bread/ Bread rolls. Popular in Co.Limerick

Pancitas — Mexican stew similar to menudo, but made with sheep stomach

Pancita — Peruvian spicy barbecue fried food made with beef tripe marinated with peppers and other ingredients

Papaitan — Filipino goat or beef tripe and offal soup flavored with bile



Patsás

Patsás (Greek: πατσάς) — Greek, tripe stew seasoned with red wine vinegar and garlic (skordostoubi) or thickened with avgolemono, widely believed to be a hangover remedy

Philadelphia Pepper Pot soup — American(Pennsylvania) tripe soup with peppercorns

Phở — Vietnamese noodle soup with many regional variations, some of which include tripe

Pickled tripe — pickled white honeycomb tripe once common in the Northeastern United States

Pieds paquets, Provençal dish, consists of stuffed sheep's offal and sheep's feet stewed together

Potted meat

Ṣakí or shaki — word for tripe in the Yorubalanguage of Nigeria, ṣakí is often included in various stews, along with other meat.

Sapu mhichā — leaf tripe bag stuffed with bone marrow and boiled and fried, from Kathmandu, Nepal

Saure Kutteln — from south Germany, made with beef tripe and vinegar or wine



Sekba, pig offal in soy sauce stew

Sekba — a Chinese Indonesian pork offalsincluding tripes stewed in mild soy sauce-based soup.

Serobe — a Botswana delicacy, mixed with intestines and in some occasions with beef meat

Shkembe (shkembe chorba) (Шкембе чорба / Чкембе чорба in Bulgarian) — a kind of tripe soup, prepared in Iran, Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Turkey, schkæm is the Persian word for stomach, sirabi is the Iranian version of shkembe

Skembici — Serbia, one of the oldest known dishes since 13th century, tripe in vegetable stew with herbs, served with boiled potato



Soto babat, spicy tripe soup

Soto babat — Indonesian spicy tripe soup

Tablier de sapeur, a speciality of Lyon

Tkalia — Moroccan spiced, seasoned in a sauce with vegetables and served on cous-cous

Tripice- Croatia, stew made with Tripe, boiled with potato and bacon added for flavour.

Tripes à la mode de Caen — in Normandy, this is a traditional stew made with tripe. It has a very codified recipe, preserved by the brotherhood of "La tripière d'or"[9] that organises a competition every year to elect the world's best tripes à la mode de Caen maker.

Tripe and beans — in Jamaica, this is a thick, spicy stew made with tripe and broad beans.

Tripe and drisheen — in Cork, Ireland

Tripe and onions — in Northern England

Tripes in Nigerian tomato sauce- tripe are cooked till tender and finished in spicy tomato sauce[10]

Tripe taco — Mexican sheep or calf tripe dish with tortillas

Tripoux — Occitan sheep tripe dish traditional in Rouergue

Trippa di Moncalieri — in Moncalieri city/Piedmont/Italy (tripe sausage, that could be served in thin slices with few drops of olive oil, minced parsley, garlic and a pinch of black pepper, or used mainly for.

[every-angel-is-terrifyingg-blog]

Aziraphale was made up of course, but who are the other principalities?

Requel is considered a ruling prince of Principalities (hey, alliterative) in the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, a book of magic from the eighteenth/nineteenth century.

However, that title also goes to:

-Anael, who is also called a prince of archangels and one of the Seven Angels of Creation.  One busy angel!

-Cerviel, who is thought to be the angel who helped David out with Goliath.

In Paradise Lost, Nisroc is identified as a fallen chief of Principalities. During the War in Heaven, he notices that Lucifer’s forces are getting hurt and wounded, but God’s angels are impervious to all pain and bodily harm. Nisroc purposes that Lucifer and the gang create a weapon that can actually hurt God’s angels, but the war is lost before that happens.  

Nisroc is based on an Assyrian deity and occult texts say he’s a Prince of Hell who is in charge of all infernal cuisine. So, he’s Hell’s head chief.

[aussietaste]

Lavash Recipe Lavash is a soft, thin unleavened flatbread made in a tandoor and eaten all over the South Caucasus, Western Asia and the areas surrounding the Caspian Sea. Lavash is one of the most widespread types of bread in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. #ArmenianCuisine, #AssyrianCuisine, #AzerbaijaniCuisine, #Breads, #Flatbreads, #IranianCuisine, #IraqiCuisine, #KazakhstaniCuisine, #KyrgyzCuisine, #Lavash, #LavashBread, #LavashBreadRecipe, #LavashDough, #LavashFlatbread, #LavashFood, #LavashHealthy, #LavashInEnglish, #LavashPitaBread, #LavashRecipe, #LavashRecipeCrispy, #LavashRecipeIdeas, #LavashRecipeWithoutYeast, #MiddleEasternCuisine, #QuickLavash, #QuickLavashRecipe, #TurkishCuisine, #WhatIsLavash, #WhatSLavash

[portofalafel]

Most Popular Tasty Middle Eastern Food

Food is a love language for many people, good food can swing someone's mood, and people can express their love for someone with food. Eastern Hemisphere has many places blessed with good geographical conditions to have a variety of grains and vegetables, which converted into some delicious and heart-melting cuisines. The cuisines of the Middle East include those from the Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Cypriot, Egyptian, Georgian, Iranian, Iraqi, Israeli, Kurdish, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Turkish people.

Like seven wonders of the World, 7 Famous Middle Eastern Foods are - 

Falafel - Middle Eastern cuisine uses falafel, particularly Levantine and Egyptian cuisines. The Middle East consumes falafel, which is a popular street snack. Most likely, Egypt's falafel came from there. Vegetarians enjoy it.

2. Hummus - A Middle Eastern spread, dip, or savoury food called hummus is created with cooked, mashed chickpeas combined with tahini, lemon juice, and garlic. It is produced industrially in the West, frequently served with crackers as a snack or an appetiser.

The traditional cuisine of Palestine includes many different meals in addition to hummus. But despite this, this is the most significant dish that Israelis and Palestinians eat together and share, possibly because both groups adore it equally.

3. Shawarma - A typical Middle Eastern dish called shawarma is made of meat that has been thinly sliced, layered in a cone-shaped pattern, and cooked on a vertical rotisserie or spit that rotates slowly. Shawarma is believed to have originated in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey. Shawarma is a popular street snack in the Middle East, including Egypt, Iraq, and the Levant.

4. Kebab - According to the unique recipe, kebabs are made from minced or ground meat, occasionally with veggies. Lamb is typically the traditional meat for kebabs. Kebab is a sort of cooked meat dish that has its roots in Middle Eastern cuisine. The category has many popular variations around the World, such as the shish kebab on a skewer and the doner kebab on bread.

5. Dolma - A family of filled meals known as "dolma" is connected with "Ottoman cuisine," the cuisine of the Ottoman Empire, which has continued in Turkish cuisine. While some varieties of dolma are produced by enclosing the filling with fruits, vegetables, animal parts, or seafood. Sarma is dolma that has been wrapped. 

6. Baklava - Turkish delicacy, known as baklava, consists of layers of filo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with honey or syrup. It originated under the Ottoman Empire and was one of the most well-liked sweet pastries in the Middle East. 

7. Knafeh – It originated in Nablus and is the most symbolic Palestinian dessert is one of the most well-known dessert dishes. It is a typical Middle Eastern dessert made from kataifi. The Middle East is where it is common. Additionally, it has variations in Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans.

[mariacallous]

My great-aunt Victoria (Toya) Levy was an incredible woman. Born in Baghdad in 1922, she moved to Israel with her husband in 1950 to start a new life. They lived in a tiny house surrounded by fruit trees that they planted in the small town of Yavneh, where Toya dedicated her life to helping children from broken families.

She was an amazing cook — and a generous one, too. Shortly after we got married, my husband and I spent a day with her to learn the secrets of Iraqi Jewish cooking from the best.

That day, Toya taught us how to make t’beet, a Shabbat dish of stuffed chicken with rice cooked overnight, and kubbeh batata: potato fritters stuffed with ground beef. In her tiny kitchen, she also taught us to make meatballs in a dried apricot and tomato sauce. Of all the dishes, this was the only one that my grandmother never made and so I was not familiar with it. Yet its flavors stuck with me. The simple ingredients — sour dried apricots, tomato, lemon juice, raisins and just a few spices — somehow made a dish much greater than the sum of its parts. The meatballs were so tender and rich, and the sauce was sweet and sour, a combination that Iraqi Jews love.

My great-aunt Toya passed away years ago. I had somehow forgotten this wonderful recipe and when I tried to research the dish, I found different versions of it in almost every Iraqi and Iraqi Jewish cookbook I searched in. The dish was called mishmishiya or kofta mishmishiya (“mishmish” means apricot in both Arabic and Hebrew), ingryieh (a name that I saw only in a Jewish cookbook) or margat hamidh-Hilu. Interestingly, all the Jewish versions included meatballs, while Islamic recipes used stew meat. I assume this had to do with the cost of ingredients and the fact that most Jewish recipes were written by Iraqi Jews who moved to Israel, where stew meat was much more expensive than ground beef. 

According to Nawal Nasrallah’s “Delights From the Garden of Eden,” which researches the ancient cuisine of Iraq, the roots of this stew can be traced back to the Babylonian and Assyrian days (19th-6th centuries B.C.). A similar recipe, called mishmishiya, is also documented in Al-Baghdadi’s book “Kitab al Tabikh” from Medieval Baghdad. It calls for fresh apricots of a sour variety. Back then, of course, tomatoes from the New World were not available and, in fact, the original mishmishiya was also known as the “white stew.” Since Jews were living in Iraq from the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C., I feel a real connection to this humble stew’s long history.

Of all the recipes I found, my great-aunt Toya’s version is the best. Her apricot meatballs have become a family favorite; the 2,000-year-old dish from worlds away lives on, now with our kids. 

Dried apricots are available all year long, but I still think this dish is most suitable for a summer dinner. The apricots, with their bright color and flavor, mirror sunny summer days, not to mention the fact that this easy and fast recipe is perfect for those of us who want to spend as little time as possible over the stove when temperatures outside are soaring.

Notes: 

The recipe calls for dried apricots with no added sugar. They are available at specialty supermarkets such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. If you’re using sweetened dried apricots, reduce the sugar in the sauce to 2 teaspoons.

The original recipe included raisins in the sauce, which I chose to omit, but you can add those for extra sweetness.

Store the cooked meatballs in a sealed container in the fridge for up to four days.

[gwendolynlerman]

Discovering the world

Libya 🇱🇾

Basic facts

Official name: دولة ليبيا (Dawlat Lībiyā) (State of Libya)

Capital city: Tripoli

Population: 6.8 million (2023)

Demonym: Libyan

Type of government: unitary parliamentary republic

Head of state: Mohamed al-Menfi (Chairman of the Presidential Council)

Head of government: Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh (Prime Minister)

Gross domestic product (purchasing power parity): $183.39 billion (2024)

Gini coefficient of wealth inequality: 44.1% (medium) (2019)

Human Development Index: 0.746 (high) (2022)

Currency: Libyan dinar (LYD)

Fun fact: It has Africa’s largest proven oil reserves.

Etymology

The country’s name comes from Libu, a tribe of Amazigh origin.

Geography

Libya is located in North Africa and borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest.

There are four main climates: hot-summer Mediterranean and cold steppe in the northeast, hot steppe in the northeast and northwest, and hot desert in the rest. Temperatures range from 4 °C (39.2 °F) in winter to 38 °C (100.4 °F) in summer. The average annual temperature is 20.2 °C (68.3 °F).

The country is divided into twenty-two districts (baladiyat). The largest cities in Libya are Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata, Beida, and Khoms.

History

911-609 BCE: Neo-Assyrian Empire

630-525 BCE: Ancient Greece

525-330 BCE: Achaemenid Empire

331-30 BCE: Ptolemaic Kingdom

146 BCE-533 CE: Roman Empire

533-661 CE: Byzantine Empire

661-750: Umayyad Caliphate

750-1517: Abbasid Caliphate

1250-1517: Mamluk Sultanate

1551-1912: Ottoman Empire

1911-1934: Italian Cyrenaica; Italian Tripolitania

1934-1943: Italian Libya

1943-1951: British Military Administration of Libya; Fezzan-Ghadames Military Territory

1949-1951: Emirate of Cyrenaica

1951-1963: United Kingdom of Libya

1963-1969: Kingdom of Libya

1969-1977: Libyan Arab Republic

1977: Egyptian-Libyan War

1977-1986: Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

1978-1987: Chadian-Libyan War

1986-2011: Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

2011: First Libyan Civil War

2011-present: State of Libya

2014-2020: Second Libyan Civil War

Economy

Libya mainly imports from Türkiye, Greece, and China and exports to Italy, Germany, and Spain. Its top exports are crude oil, rice, and dates.

The oil sector accounts for over half of the GDP. Industry represents 63.8% of the GDP, followed by services (34.9%) and agriculture (1.3%).

Libya is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Demographics

Arabs account for 92% of the population, while Imazighen represent 5%. The state religion is Islam, practiced by 96.6% of the population, 94.2% of which is Sunni.

It has a positive net migration rate and a fertility rate of 3 children per woman. 80.1% of the population lives in urban areas. Life expectancy is 73.2 years and the median age is 25.8 years. The literacy rate is 91%.

Languages

The official language of the country is Arabic. Amazigh languages include Awjilah, Ghadamès, Nafusi, Tamahaq, and Yefren.

Culture

Libyan culture has Amazigh, Arab, Bedouin, and Italian influences. Libyans are extremely generous and hospitable.

Men traditionally wear a long, white shirt (jalabiya), pants (sirwal), an embroidered jacket (sadriya), and a headdress (shashiyah). Women wear an embroidered blouse with baggy sleeves, a dress, and a headscarf (hijab).

Architecture

Traditional houses in Libya are made of white painted stone and have flat roofs.

Cuisine

The Libyan diet is based on fish, meat, pasta, and vegetables. Typical dishes include batata mubattana (fried potatoes filled with minced meat and covered with egg and breadcrumbs), bazin (unleavened bread made of barley served with eggs, meat, potatoes, and tomato sauce), makroudh (a diamond-shaped cookie filled with dates and almond past), shakshouka (poached eggs in tomato sauce), and usban (a sausage stuffed with meat and rice).

Holidays and festivals

Like other Muslim countries, Libya celebrates Islamic New Year, Mawlid, Eid al-Fitr, Day of Arafah, and Eid al-Adha. It also commemorates Labor Day.

Specific Libyan holidays include February 17 Revolution Day on February 17, Commemoration of the Victory over Kadhafi on March 19, Martyrs’ Day on September 16, Liberation Day on October 23, and Independence Day on December 24.

Independence Day

Other celebrations include the Acacus Festival, with music performances in the desert; the Nalut Spring Festival, which features parades and performances, and the Zuwarah Awessu Festival, which includes ritual sea bathing.

Nalut Spring Festival

Landmarks

There are five UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Archeological Site of Cyrene, Archeological Site of Leptis Magna, Archeological Site of Sabratha, Old Town of Ghadamès, and Rock-Art Sites of Tadrart Acacus.

Archeological Site of Sabratha

Other landmarks include the Al-Majidya Mosque, the Benghazi Cathedral, the Martyrs’ Square, the Red Castle, and the Roman Arch of Marcus Aurelius.

Martyrs’ Square

Famous people

Ahmed Fakroun - singer

Dania Ben Sassi - singer

Fairouz Belkheir - fashion designer

Ghada Ali - athlete

Leslie Stewart - movie director

Maryam Salama - poet and writer

Nahla Bushnaf - photographer and teacher

Samir Aboud - soccer player

Sulaiman al-Barouni - writer

Suleiman Ali Nashnush - actor and basketball player

Suleiman Ali Nashnush

You can find out more about life in Libya in this article and this video.

[sethshead]

This is so dreadfully ahistorical and nonsensical.

Not every Levantine cultural artifact is of Arab origin, and not every Arab cultural artifact is of Palestinian origin. These are regional dishes, many of which have very murky roots or whose contemporary forms were themselves the results of multiple cultural and geographic transfers.

Don’t forget: indigenous peoples in the region like Jews, Assyrians, Copts, mozarabic Christians, etc., were making food long before the Arab expansions and introduced recipes to the Islamic Arab conquerors. Dishes of more recent provenance are as much a part of those indigenous peoples’ cultures as they are of Arabs’. To frame them as fundamentally Palestinian when “Palestinian” is understood to refer to a specifically Arab people erases the diversity and legitimacy of a non-Arab presence in their own native land.

As for “Palestinian bagels,” the act of boiling dough prior to baking is a widespread practice that has been the result of multiple cultural exchanges as well as independent, convergent development. It would be like Jews claiming that, since Portuguese Jews brought the battered and deep-fried fish that would eventually become fish and chips to England, therefore anything deep-fried, like Sichuan tea-smoked duck, must therefore be of Jewish origin. It’s an insane stretch of logic.

Further, the kaak was introduced to Judea by the Romans. They were originally known in Hebrew as qanubqaot. Now they’re called everything from begele to simitler to kouloúria to bokegh. They are very different from the Ashkenazi beygl. Even if there is distant relation, the bagel in America is a distinctly Jewish foodstuff.

I have no objection to a Palestinian or anyone else finding inspiration in Jewish cuisine and experimenting with hybridization. I welcome that - it brings people together. But when so much Palestinian Arab culture centers on denying the Jewishness of central aspects of Jewish identity, from our very ethnic origins to our Temple to Old Jerusalem to the Cave of the Patriarchs to our scripture and so on, this Palestinian claim to even bagels comes off as more appropriation and erasure of Jewish enterprise and ingenuity.

No doubt, Jewish bakers in Vienna were influenced by the world around them, from Poles to Ottomans, in bringing the bagel to its contemporary recognizable form. That is a beautiful argument for our mutual connectivity - but not when that argument is part of someone else imposing their exclusive claim to who were are, where we’ve been, and what we’ve created. The attitude of “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is also mine” continues to be expressed as an instrument of Jewish erasure. Like Christian supersessionism seeks to shove Jews out of our own narrative, so too does this, and it’s shameful NPR gave no pushback or clarification here.

[successdigestonline]

Cyprus: Destination And Cuisine In The Jewel Of The Mediterranean

Cyprus: Destination And Cuisine In The Jewel Of The Mediterranean

Kyrenia’s horseshoe-shaped harbor, Cyprus | Image: Getty Image/iStockphoto Cyprus is a jewel in the Mediterranean that was coveted by several world empires throughout history, including the empires of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Ottoman, Roman and even the Arabs. The island nation is situated at the north-eastern end of the Mediterranean basin. It is the third largest and third most…

[armeniaitn]

WE: A guide to Armenia, one of the world’s oldest wine regions

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/society/we-a-guide-to-armenia-one-of-the-worlds-oldest-wine-regions-76538-19-07-2021/

WE: A guide to Armenia, one of the world’s oldest wine regions

July 19, 2021 – 19:18 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Through triumphs and tumult, Armenia’s wine industry is again on the rebound, The Wine Enthusiast says in a fresh article about the country’s vinous renaissance: Armenia’s wine history is ancient.

Patrick McGovern, scientific director of biomolecular archaeology project for cuisine, fermented beverages and health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum

While exact details of ancient winemaking remain romantically murky, ancient texts authenticated by historians offer a glimpse of Armenia’s ancestral glory.

In the book “Ancient Wine”, Patrick McGovern, scientific director of biomolecular archaeology project for cuisine, fermented beverages and health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, details how 8th century B.C. Urartian monarchs, an Iron Age kingdom that ruled the Armenian Highlands, dubbed Armenia “the land of the vineyards.” The Assyrians and Greeks also referenced Armenian wine in various texts.

The progression of Armenian wine ended when the Soviet Red Army invaded in 1920. Two years later, the country was merged into the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. In 1936, it became the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, or Soviet Armenia.

In 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Armenia regained its sovereignty. Young Armenians and those with investment money began to embrace the region’s ancient techniques and storied wine culture. In other words, Armenia has the distinction of being the youngest oldest wine industry in the world.

So far, researchers have catalogued 400 indigenous varieties from a cache of wild vines cultivated by early Armenians.

There are four main wine regions. The best known is the south-central region of Vayots Dzor, a long, narrow plateau which stands out for its highest elevation vineyards, some which reach almost 6,000 feet above sea level. “To put things in perspective, high elevation in continental Spain and Northern Italy is maybe 2,300 to 2,900 feet,” says Poldoian.

Aragatsotn sits at slightly lower elevation. Other regions to note include Ararat, located on a sunny plateau; Armavir, a mountainous area in the southwest; and Artsakh, on the border with Azerbaijan.

Read original article here

[justmyimaginednation]

Pink Boxes: Unfolding into an Unlikely Symbol of Resistance

by Emily Tiang

https://medium.com/pinkboxstories/pink-boxes-unfolding-into-an-unlikely-symbol-of-resistance-524078d53be5

I had my first direct encounter with the law at age 10.

Over summer break, I was running around the family donut shop — carrying large stacks of pink boxes — when a city official entered the store. The man’s one-sided conversation left my parents in ominous silence. After his departure, I glanced at the sizable stack of documents that he left for my parents to comb through. My adolescent instincts led me to conclude that the single-spaced, imageless documents indicated a serious adult issue. But when my father pried his head away from the pages and locked eyes with me, I knew that the issue was, in fact, me.

CHILD LABOR VIOLATION.

The words popped off the page. Anxiety ballooned inside me as I mouthed each word, not fully comprehending the complete phrase. Soon I witnessed my mother in distress over the possibility of Child Services intervening, while my father fumed in frustration over a state fine higher than the shop’s monthly rent. Our family would be penalized for our wealth disparity. My parents could not afford childcare for me, other than to provide it themselves, nor were they able to hire on additional staff during the morning rush-hour crowd. On top of it all, there was the unspoken tension that this child labor violation served as a legal signifier from the state that my parents had failed at parenting, solely because I was spotted on the wrong side of the bar counter.

I existed in a bubble. I was not exposed to childcare outside of my parents at the donut shop. I could not comprehend the idea of having “chores” limited to the domestic sphere of the household. What difference did it make if I took the trash out at home or the donut shop? What was the difference between washing my cereal bowl at home versus washing a coffee mug at the donut shop? I prided myself on my responsibilities and work ethic, just like my father who woke up every day at 1:00 AM to bake hundreds of donuts and my mother at 4:00 AM to brew coffee and open the store. It felt normal.

Our donut shop, Best Donut, was located in the very middle of a five-storefront strip mall off Washington Street in Santa Clara, California. We were surrounded by people who looked and felt like us. To our left was Kiraku (a mom and pop Japanese restaurant) and Hiroko’s Salon (originally a hair salon by a Japanese couple, later a Vietnamese nail salon named KD Hair). To our right, was Middle East Foods (a small grocery store ran by a Syrian family, later an Ethiopian family), followed by Crystal Cleaners (a dry cleaners ran by a Vietnamese couple), and at the very end, the life of the plaza, Normandy Bar (a dive bar owned and operated by an Army veteran). I grew up getting all my haircuts from Violet at Hiroko’s — she shared beautiful stories of her Assyrian cuisine and cultural traditions. I learned from Violet what it meant to be from an ethnic group of a stateless nation, which allowed me to better connect with my Hmong family friends. Violet also gave me the cleanest looking bowl cut — at the request of my dear mother.

I watched all these families work tirelessly on their own, but especially together. Sometimes the folks at Kiraku would drop off salmon teriyaki and shrimp tempura for my family because they knew we were too busy to make lunch.

I watched all these families work tirelessly on their own, but especially together. Sometimes the folks at Kiraku would drop off salmon teriyaki and shrimp tempura for my family because they knew we were too busy to make lunch. My father would help with a leaking pipe at the Middle East Food grocery store, or my mom would watch their store briefly when the owner had to run out to a doctor’s appointment. And all the children of the plaza helped out. Both the sons of Hiroko’s salon — at the time one was in medical school at Stanford and another was working at a start-up called Google — would come in the late afternoon to help sweep and tidy up their store. Kiraku’s daughter, who started her own small business, would come in every Friday and Saturday nights to waitress tables with her mother and cook with her father. And I had an array of responsibilities myself from brooming to cleaning the tables to restocking the refrigerator. But most important were the pink boxes. I was in charge of folding the pink donut boxes and would crank out one, two, and three dozen donut boxes in seconds, never letting our behind-the-counter supplies dip below five boxes.

The donut shop was not just a business, but an extension of the home my parents built for me. We were a community of small businesses trying our best to support one another, the best way we knew how. As a result, my family received assistance from our neighbors and several customers to petition the alleged charges and explain to the authorities that I was not working against my will, or in hazardous conditions, or missing school. With resilience and fortitude, my parents and I navigated the entanglement that is the natural state of bureaucratic institutions, and ultimately got the child labor violations dropped. While I was relieved at the results, I learned a lot about others’ implicit biases and how not knowing the full story can hurt the lives of others. What did a customer report to the authorities exactly? Was it because my mom disciplined me by refusing to allow me to drink soda for breakfast, or eat candy bars to my heart’s content? Or scolded me for roller skating behind the counter and knocking over a tray of apple fritters? Or berated me for playing Jenga with chocolate old-fashioned and sprinkle cake donuts stacked three feet high? Were these normal childhood games ending in quarrels with my parents the child labor violations?

The donut shop was not just a business, but an extension of the home my parents built for me.

Growing into my teenage years and young adulthood, I became weary of what was considered “normal” in society, because it did not fit with my personal experiences or view of the world from inside the donut shop. I was on the lookout for additional bubbles in need of bursting. Perhaps this was a formative transition, like yeast rising inside me to shape myself and discover the unthinkable. Or perhaps this challenging the status quo was the impact of intergenerational trauma, the pressure cracks erupting onto a smooth doughy surface and hot oil seeping through, as the distrust of institutions and authorities boiled inside me, reaching its smoke point.

My fondest pastime was racing my friends to see who could fold the most pink cardboard sheets into donut boxes, because I had the upper hand. As I folded hundreds of pink boxes, I often pondered what “normal” is and who constructs the narrative. Normal is nothing more than a race of who speaks the loudest and writes the most stories. After enduring multiple paper cuts from the pink boxes over the years, I concluded that the opposite of normal is “resistance.” Resistance is the quieter and often erased stories of people and families’ lived experiences. To resist could be as simple as to exist.

“Normal” is speaking English with no accent at all. Resistance is a Vietnamese Chinese auntie born in Hội An, immigrating to San Jose due to the Resistance War Against America (aka Vietnam War), now working in an Asian supermarket speaking “broken” English. Resistance is the unacknowledged truth at face value: that English is the auntie’s sixth language behind Vietnamese, Cantonese, Teochew, Hokkien, and Mandarin.

Normal is measuring the success of a business by quarterly profits, equity, franchising, or going public. Resistance tells a tale of small immigrant-owned businesses succeeding through camaraderie and borderless community building among the diaspora. Resistance is the Cambodian refugee baker working at three different donut shops to send remittances to the motherland so his relatives can start a business of their own.

Sometimes when I return home to the donut shop, I automatically sit by the bar counter and begin folding pink boxes. My mother walks over with a plate of sliced watermelon and humors herself, “That’s not normal.” She talks about someone “with a master’s degree working in corporate law in New York City folding cardboard boxes at a simple donut shop.”

And she’s right — it’s not normal, it’s resistance.

[sarucookies]

About

Hi hii!! I decided to revamp my About page. I hope this helps!

General Information

Name(s) | Suzie Birthday | May 20th, 1994 Currently resides | Canada Zodiac | Taurus Height | 5′4″ Pronouns + Sexual Orientation | She / Her + AroAce Nationality | Assyrian + Canadian Religious Views | Agnostic

Interests & Hobbies

Drawing + Colouring

Animation

Retro RPG Games

Character Design

Music in (almost) all forms (country isn’t really my thing)

Fashion

Organization and Schedules

Working Out

Feeling cozy at all times

Sewing

Cute Things

Favourites

Dusty Rose, Jade Green, and Teal

Sandwiches

Mona Lisa Lilies

Spring

Japanese Cuisine

Dislikes

Cursing

Last Minute Plans

Sand

Anti-LGBT+, Racists, Proshippers

Ventriloquist Dummies

Horror Films

April Fools Day

Unwanted sex scenes in media

SAD + Art Block

Loud Noises

Expired food //cries

Favourite Series + Films

Ape Escape

Tales of the Abyss

Kingdom Hearts

One Piece

InuYasha

Naruto

Zatch Bell

The Owl House

Ore Monogatari!!

Demon Slayer

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Amphibia

Animal Crossing

Hey Arnold!

Klasky Csupo cartoons

Craig of the Creek

We Bare Bears

Spongebob Squarepants (s1-3)

Cinderella, 1950

Avatar: The Last Airbender + The Legend of Korra