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Börek
Börek or burek are a family of pastries or pies found in the Balkans, Middle East and Central Asia. The pastry is made of a thin flaky dough such as filo with a variety of fillings, such as meat, cheese, spinach or potatoes. Boreks are mainly associated with Anatolia, the Middle East, Armenia, and also with the former Ottoman Empire, including the Balkans and the South Caucasus, Eastern European and Central European countries, Northern Africa and Central Asia. A borek may be prepared in a large pan and cut into portions after baking, or as individual pastries. They are usually baked but some varieties can be fried. Borek is sometimes sprinkled with sesame or nigella seeds, and it can be served hot or cold. It is a custom of Sephardic Jews to have ''bourekas'' for their Shabbat breakfast meal on Saturday mornings. In Bosnia and Herzegovina it has become commonplace to have borek as a breakfast food with coffee. It is commonly served with afternoon tea in Bosnia and Herzegovina ...
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Ottoman Cuisine
Ottoman cuisine is the cuisine of the Ottoman Empire and its continuation in the cuisines of Turkey, the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East and Northern Africa. Today, Turkish cuisine is a continuation of Ottoman cuisine. Sources The Ottoman palace kitchen registers (''matbah-i amire defterleri'') are important primary sources for studies of early modern Ottoman cuisine containing information on ingredients and names of food dishes cooked by the palace kitchens. Many cookbooks were published beginning in the 19th century reflecting the cultural fusions that characterized the rich cuisine of Istanbul's elites in the Late Ottoman period as new ingredients like tomatoes became widely available. There are few extant recipe collections before this era. The earliest Ottoman cookbook is credited to Muhammad Shirvânî's 15th-century expansion of the earlier Arabic ''Kitab al-Tabikh'' by Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi. '' Diwan Lughat al-Turk'' (the earliest Turkish language dictio ...
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Bourekas
Bourekas or burekas ( he, בורקס) are a popular baked pastry in Sephardic Jewish cuisine and Israeli cuisine. A variation of the burek, a popular pastry throughout southern Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East, Israeli bourekas are made in a wide variety of shapes and a vast selection of fillings, and are typically made with either puff pastry, filo dough, or brik pastry, depending on the origin of the baker. Etymology As knowledge of Ladino is lost among the younger generation of Sephardic Jews, Judeo-Spanish has become a "language of food". Food names have been described as "the last Judeo-Spanish remains" of the cultural memory of Ottoman-Sephardic heritage. The word ''boureka'' (or ''borekita'') is a Judeo-Spanish loanword from the Turkish ''börek''. Spanish does not have the front rounded Turkish ''ö'' sound, so the word becomes ''boreka''. As one Turkish food writer put it, "Ladino is the ''borekitas'' of the granmama". In Judeo-Spanish ''boreka'' original ...
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Filo
Filo or phyllo is a very thin unleavened dough used for making pastries such as baklava and börek in Middle Eastern and Balkan cuisines. Filo-based pastries are made by layering many sheets of filo brushed with oil or butter; the pastry is then baked. Name and etymology The name ''filo'' (phonetic) or ''phyllo'' (transliteration) comes from Greek 'leaf'.Alan Davidson (2014). ''The Oxford Companion to Food'. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . p. 307. In Turkish, it is called ' 'thin', a word which is also used for a kind of thin unleavened bread. In Arabic, it is called ''reqaqot''; in Morocco, warqa ( ar, ورقة). The Albanian flia also may be named for ''fije''/''fli'' 'sheet, leaf'. History The origin of the practice of stretching raw dough into paper-thin sheets is unclear, with many cultures claiming credit.Mayer, Caroline E.Phyllo Facts. Washington Post. 1989Archived Some claim it may be derived from the Greeks; Homer's ''Odyssey'', written around 800 BC, mentio ...
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Brik
Brik ( ; ) or ''burek'' is the north African version of borek, a stuffed filo pastry which is commonly deep fried. The best-known version is the egg brik, a whole egg in a triangular pastry pocket with chopped onion, tuna, harissa and parsley. With a slightly different shape, but with identical ingredients and method of preparation, the ''brik'' is known in Algeria and Libya as ''bourek'' (). Brik is also very popular in Israel, due to the large Tunisian Jewish population there. It is often filled with a raw egg and herbs or tuna, harissa and olives and is sometimes served in a pita. This is also known as a ''boreeka''. Brik pastry is made by slapping a sticky lump of dough onto a hot non-stick surface in overlapping circles to produce the desired size and cooked for a short amount of time. The brik dough sheets are called malsouka or warka. Typical fillings include tuna, ground meat, raw egg, chicken, or anchovies garnished with harissa, capers, or cheese. Regional variants ...
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Shekarbura
Shekarbureh (. Azeri şəkərbura) is a sweet pastry, dating back to at least the Sassanid era. Originally, it was like a halva made from sugar and almonds. Its alternate names in Persian include ''Shekarborak'', ''Shekarbora'', ''Shekarpareh'' and ''Shekarpirah''. In its different variations, the dessert is also common in Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey. Versions In Anatolia this pastry is called Şekerpare in Turkish and is one of the popular desserts in the Turkish cuisine. Mainly prepared by baking some soft balls of almond based pastry dipped in thick lemon-flavored sugar syrup, şekerpare is pronounced “''sheh-kehr-PAH-rih''” in Turkish. In the Republic of Azerbaijan it is called ''şəkərbura'' and is used as a dessert. It is a sweet pastry in half-moon shape, filled with ground almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts, and sugar. Shekerbura, ''shorgoghal'', and ''pakhlava'' are the iconic foods of Novruz holiday in Azerbaijan. In Azerbaijan, it usually involves teamwork of ...
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Balkan Cuisine
Balkan cuisine is a type of regional cuisine that combines characteristics of European cuisine with some of those from Western Asia. It is found in the Balkan Peninsula of Southeast Europe, a region without clear boundaries but which is generally considered to at least include the modern countries of Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece and the former Yugoslavia, with the possible exception of Slovenia and northern inland regions of Croatia. Balkan cuisine can also be found in Vienna as a result of post-WWII migration to that city. Germany has restaurants serving Balkan cuisine, which were often called Yugoslavian restaurants until the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars. A restaurant selling Romani cuisine opened in Slovenia 2014. Romani cuisine, the traditional food of the Romani people, includes dishes from traditional Balkan cuisine. History The Balkans have a history of foreign rule and internal power struggles, and this has resulted in a diverse cuisine in which influences have m ...
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Armenian Cuisine
Armenian cuisine includes the foods and cooking techniques of the Armenian people and traditional Armenian foods and dishes. The cuisine reflects the history and geography where Armenians have lived as well as sharing outside influences from European and Levantine cuisines. The cuisine also reflects the traditional crops and animals grown and raised in Armenian-populated areas. The preparation of meat, fish, and vegetable dishes in an Armenian kitchen often requires stuffing, frothing, and puréeing. Lamb, eggplant, and bread (lavash) are basic features of Armenian cuisine. Armenians traditionally prefer cracked wheat (bulgur) to maize and rice. The flavor of the food often relies on the quality and freshness of the ingredients rather than on excessive use of spices. Fresh herbs are used extensively, both in the food and as accompaniments. Dried herbs are used in the winter when fresh herbs are not available. Wheat is the primary grain and is found in a variety of forms, such ...
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Sevan Nişanyan
Sevan Nişanyan ( hyw, Սեւան Նշանեան; born 21 December 1956) is a Turkish-Armenian writer and linguist. An author of a number of books ("The Wrong Republic", "The Etymological Dictionary" and others), Nişanyan was awarded the Ayşe Nur Zarakolu Liberty Award of the Turkish Human Rights Association in 2004 for his contributions to greater freedom of speech. He is also known for his work to restore a semi-derelict village, Şirince, near Turkey’s Aegean coast. Sevan Nişanyan was given a cumulative prison sentence of 16 years and 7 months for alleged building infractions, after he criticized the government’s attempts to prohibit the prophet Muhammad's criticism in a blog entry in September 2012. He escaped from the prison in July 2017 and moved to Athens, where he intended to apply for political asylum, as stated in his interview to the Belgian daily ''La Libre Belgique''. He subsequently went to live in exile in Samos, stating that he is "grateful to the prov ...
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Shabbat
Shabbat (, , or ; he, שַׁבָּת, Šabbāṯ, , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the week—i.e., Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical stories describing the creation of the heaven and earth in six days and the redemption from slavery and The Exodus from Egypt, and look forward to a future Messianic Age. Since the Jewish religious calendar counts days from sunset to sunset, Shabbat begins in the evening of what on the civil calendar is Friday. Shabbat observance entails refraining from work activities, often with great rigor, and engaging in restful activities to honour the day. Judaism's traditional position is that the unbroken seventh-day Shabbat originated among the Jewish people, as their first and most sacred institution. Variations upon Shabbat are widespread in Judaism and, with adaptations, throughout the Abrahamic and many other religions. According to ''halakha ...
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Persian Language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian (officially known as ''Persian''), Dari Persian (officially known as ''Dari'' since 1964) and Tajiki Persian (officially known as ''Tajik'' since 1999).Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in ''Media Insight Central Asia #27'', August 2002. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a der ...
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Middle Persian
Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language. It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, an official language of Iran, Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan ( Tajik). Name "Middle Iranian" is the name given to the middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects. The middle stage of the Iranian languages begins around 450 BCE and ends around 650 CE. One of those Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, i.e. the middle stage of the language of the Persians, an Iranian people of Persia proper, which lies in the south-western highlands on the border with Babylonia. The Persians called their language ''Parsik'', meaning "Persian". Anot ...
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Tunisia
) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , coordinates = , official_languages = Arabic Translation by the University of Bern: "Tunisia is a free State, independent and sovereign; its religion is the Islam, its language is Arabic, and its form is the Republic." , religion = , languages_type = Spoken languages , languages = Minority Dialects : Jerba Berber (Chelha) Matmata Berber Judeo-Tunisian Arabic (UNESCO CR) , languages2_type = Foreign languages , languages2 = , ethnic_groups = * 98% Arab * 2% Other , demonym = Tunisian , government_type = Unitary presidential republic , leader_title1 = President , leader_name1 = Kais Saied , leader_ti ...
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