21–30 of 63 posts
I didn't notice until my partner said after we walked away, "You asked for Balaclava!" haha
Will never live it down...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Syria isnt 300 years old ? Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world.....
I think the parent poster meant that the specific modern countries are fairly new, and before they were all part of the same entities . Greece and Turkey were both part of the Byzantine Empire for centuries, and later part of the successor Ottoman Empire - together with Syria - again for centuries. Separate "national" identities for those areas didn't really exist until the XIX century, when Greeks started agitating…
There has been a Greek culture (if not country) practically forever. Saying somehow the Greek people are a new people is just wrong.
That would be like saying China was created in the 1950's. The current government maybe, but not the culture, history, cuisine, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Syria isnt 300 years old ? Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world.....
I think the parent poster meant that the specific modern countries are fairly new, and before they were all part of the same entities . Greece and Turkey were both part of the Byzantine Empire for centuries, and later part of the successor Ottoman Empire - together with Syria - again for centuries. Separate "national" identities for those areas didn't really exist until the XIX century, when Greeks started agitating…
The Ottoman Empire's own administration did categorize its peoples sorta based on religion and apply different laws to them. The millets were Muslims, Armenians, Greeks, Circassians, and more. These were meaningful designations at least because of how marriage tended to stay within the same religious sect. Besides that, I've heard the closest thing to a national identity back then was the nearest city, rather than the empire. The major cities in that region were ethnically diverse, so some of your culture specifically had to do with your city, while other aspects had to do with your ethnicity/religion.
In this case, baklava supposedly originated in Antep. I don't know what the ethnic makeup was like in the 1500s there, but I'd wager it was picked up by multiple cultures around the same time there (someone can prove me wrong if not). So if you really want to give "credit" to some people for it, I think Antep is the most correct answer, and I don't just mean PC.
The Balkans has a strong baklava tradition after centuries of Turkish occupation, but today virtually any confectionary shop, even the poshest, is going to use palm oil. You aren't getting the original recipe with butter or olive oil unless you do the whole painstaking process at home. I wonder if the same has become true in Turkey as well.
There’s a baklava place in SF called Baklava Story that is hands down the best baklava I have ever had and probably will ever will have. The owner, Tolgay, travels to Turkey each year to source pistachios and milk to make butter with from specific farms each year. With the residual milk from making clarified butter from the Turkish milk, he makes soap, and gives it to customers. Every single one of his reviews on Goo…
Basically, the Unix philosophy applied to cuisine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the parent poster meant that the specific modern countries are fairly new, and before they were all part of the same entities . Greece and Turkey were both part of the Byzantine Empire for centuries, and later part of the successor Ottoman Empire - together with Syria - again for centuries. Separate "national" identities for those areas didn't really exist until the XIX century, when Greeks started agitating…
Weird way to say it. The governments of these modern-day countries are not representative of the people of those regions. There has been a Greek culture (if not country) practically forever. Saying somehow the Greek people are a new people is just wrong. That would be like saying China was created in the 1950's. The current government maybe, but not the culture, history, cuisine, etc.
The Balkans has a strong baklava tradition after centuries of Turkish occupation, but today virtually any confectionary shop, even the poshest, is going to use palm oil. You aren't getting the original recipe with butter or olive oil unless you do the whole painstaking process at home. I wonder if the same has become true in Turkey as well.
Baklava isn't really all that hard to make in your home kitchen if you use premade phyllo, available in almost every supermarket (in the US, anyway, although I also saw it in London and Germany). Then you can alter the fats and volatiles as much as you please. The hardest part, in this instance, is finding the precisely correct thawing time for the frozen phyllo. Too little, it is brittle and breaks instantly; too mu…
Easy to make. A bit time consuming perhaps, but worth it. I've had mine "approved" by a colleague with Turkish family and a Greek orthodox grandmother, so it can't be bad!
The Balkans has a strong baklava tradition after centuries of Turkish occupation, but today virtually any confectionary shop, even the poshest, is going to use palm oil. You aren't getting the original recipe with butter or olive oil unless you do the whole painstaking process at home. I wonder if the same has become true in Turkey as well.
Baklava isn't really all that hard to make in your home kitchen if you use premade phyllo, available in almost every supermarket (in the US, anyway, although I also saw it in London and Germany). Then you can alter the fats and volatiles as much as you please. The hardest part, in this instance, is finding the precisely correct thawing time for the frozen phyllo. Too little, it is brittle and breaks instantly; too mu…
I swear I've seen this post and exact same comments earlier today. Edit: it looks like "X minutes ago" feature is broken. Tooltips show the correct time, which is more than 10 hours ago, while it shows 15 minutes ago.
This post has been rescued by the second chance pool at https://news.ycombinator.com/pool When this happens, the relative timestamps (X minutes ago etc.) are reset to the time at which the post is selected for the front page. The absolute timestamps in the tooltips, like you have discovered, show the actual time in this case.
Whether baklava is Greek or Turkish or Syrian is a silly question because none of those countries are even 300 years old. But Greek restaurants were the first to arrive in Western cities so that's how the world sees it.