Baklava

Baklava or baklawa is a rich, sweet pastry found in many cuisines of the Middle East, South Asia, and the Balkans. It is made of chopped nuts layered with phyllo pastry, sweetened with sugar or honey syrup.

History

The history of baklava, like that of many other foods, is not well documented. Though it has been claimed by many peoples, the best evidence is that, despite its Arabic-seeming name, it is of Turkish origin.

Vryonis (1971) identified the ancient Greek gastris, kopte, kopton, or koptoplakous, mentioned in the Deipnosophistae, as baklava, and calls it a "Byzantine favorite." However, Perry (1994) shows that though gastris contained a filling of nuts and honey, it did not include any dough; instead, it involved a honey and ground sesame mixture similar to modern pasteli or halva .

Perry then assembles evidence to show that layered breads were created by Turks in Central Asia and argues that the "missing link" between the Central Asian folded or layered breads (which did not include nuts) and modern phyllo-based pastries like baklava is the Azerbaijani dish Baki pakhlavası. Further development would have occurred in the kitchens of the Topkapi Palace, where the Janissaries had an annual celebration called Baklava Alayı.

[edit]

Name

The word baklava entered English from Turkish; it may be derived from Arabic بقلاوة baqlāwaḧ, based on an Arabic word for "nuts," but Buell (in Christian, 1999) argues that the word "baklava" is of Mongolian origin, and mentions a recipe in a Chinese cookbook written in 1330 under the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty.

Baklava is found in many cuisines, with minor phonetic variations on the name:

Afghan Albanian bakllava Armenian փախլավա (pʼaḫlava) Assyrian Azeri Bangladeshi Bosnian baklava Bulgarian баклава (baklava) Egyptian بقلاوة (baʼlēwa) Georgian tapluna.

Greek μπακλαβάς (baklavás) Hungarian báklafa Indian Iraqi Israeli בַּקְלָוָה or בקלוה (baqlawa) Kurdish Lebanese بقلاوة (baʼlēwa) Levantine بقلاوة (baʼlēwa) Macedonian баклава (baklava) Montenegrin baklava

Pakistani Persian باقلوا (baqlavā) Palestinian بقلاوة (bak'lawa) Polish bakława Romanian baclava Serbian баклава (baklava) Somali baqlawad (baklawad) Syrian بقلاوة (baʼlēwa) Turkish baklava, Ottoman باقلوا Tunisian بقلاوة (baʼlēwa).

Resource: Wikipedia