Reality show star Kourtney Kardashian posted a photo of pakhlava (baklava), one of the most famous and exquisite dishes of Armenian cuisine, on her Instagram page.”Homemade Armenian Pakhlava”, wrote Kourtney Kardashian.
According to Ermenihaber, this post has angered Turk users. They wrote various comments under the photo. Here are some of the comments: “Pakhlava is our red line. Don’t go overboard”. “Pakhlava is ours, ours will remain”.
Pakhlava is one of the most famous and exquisite dishes of Armenian and eastern cuisine. In Armenia, there are several widespread variations of pakhlava, including Yerevan and Gavar.
Baklava is a rich, sweet dessert pastry made of layers of filo filled with chopped nuts and sweetened and held together with syrup or honey. It is characteristic of the cuisines of the Levant and the broader Middle East, along with Greece, the South Caucasus, Balkans, Maghreb, and Central Asia.
The word baklava is first attested in English in 1650, a borrowing from Ottoman Turkish. The name baklava is used in many languages with minor phonetic and spelling variations. Linguist Sevan Nişanyan considers its oldest known forms (pre-1500) to be baklağı and baklağu, and labels it as being of Proto-Turkic origin.
Historian Paul D. Buell argues that the word “baklava” may come from the Mongolian root baγla- ‘to tie, wrap up, pile up’ composed with the Turkic verbal ending -v; baγla- itself in Mongolian is a Turkic loanword. Another form of the word is also recorded in Persian bāqlabā. Though the suffix -vā might suggest a Persian origin, the baqla- part does not appear to be Persian and remains of unknown origin.
Although the history of baklava is not well documented, its current form was probably developed in the imperial kitchens of the Topkapı Palace, or the Seraglio, that has served as the main residence and administrative headquarters of the Ottoman sultans, in Istanbul. The Sultan presented trays of baklava to the Janissaries every 15th of the month of Ramadan in a ceremonial procession called the Baklava Alayı.
There are three proposals for the pre-Ottoman roots of baklava: the Roman placenta cake, as developed through Byzantine cuisine, the Central Asian Turkic tradition of layered breads, or the Persian lauzinaq.
The oldest (2nd century BCE) recipe that resembles a similar dessert is the honey covered baked layered-dough dessert placenta of Roman times, which Patrick Faas identifies as the origin of baklava: “The Greeks and the Turks still argue over which dishes were originally Greek and which Turkish. Baklava, for example, is claimed by both countries.
Greek and Turkish cuisine both built upon the cookery of the Byzantine Empire, which was a continuation of the cooking of the Roman Empire. Roman cuisine had borrowed a great deal from the ancient Greeks, but placenta (and hence baklava) had a Latin, not a Greek, origin—please note that the conservative, anti-Greek Cato left us this recipe.”
