Shakshuka is a Meditarranean recipe. Again by Alia, it is very easy and all time food for working people or students. Also it needs only up to 4-5 ingredients.
Sep 28, 2013
Mediterranean No Bake Cookies - Rfiss Tounsi
This is no-bake cookie that is so easy, I am going to try it today. Want to share it here, the video is made by this peppy host called Alia. It needs only 4-5 ingredients. Enjoy!!!
Jun 17, 2013
Persian carpet
So many halls may have seen the grandeur of the Persian carpets yet not many people it has a long and interesting history. Here are a few facts to start us off.
A Persian carpet is one of the finest example of Persian craftsmanship. They are valued worldwide for their intricate design as well as the quality. They are often passed on as heirlooms.
The artisans who weave the carpet work for months or even years on a single piece of carpet. The artisan will also intentionally leave a flaw in this piece of art, a humble reminder that the only perfection is in Allah or God, the most poetic thing about a Persian carpet.
The picture below is the world's largest Persian carpet. It has been weaved for the Sheikh Zayed Mosque or the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, UAE. It is spread across 6000 sq metres and weighs 48 tonnes. It had to be cargoed in one piece, only piece, in a Boeing.
A Persian carpet is one of the finest example of Persian craftsmanship. They are valued worldwide for their intricate design as well as the quality. They are often passed on as heirlooms.
The artisans who weave the carpet work for months or even years on a single piece of carpet. The artisan will also intentionally leave a flaw in this piece of art, a humble reminder that the only perfection is in Allah or God, the most poetic thing about a Persian carpet.
The picture below is the world's largest Persian carpet. It has been weaved for the Sheikh Zayed Mosque or the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, UAE. It is spread across 6000 sq metres and weighs 48 tonnes. It had to be cargoed in one piece, only piece, in a Boeing.
May 14, 2013
Salep - Middle Eastern Drink / Dessert
Salep, Sahlep, Sahlab is a Middle Eastern drink that became popular during the Ottoman empire. It is not a beverage like tea, coffee, beer or cola. One, it is made from tubers of orchid, two it is not caffeinated or alcoholic.
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon instant sahlep powder
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon instant sahlep powder
2 teaspoon sugar, (like kheer/pudding tastes better when sweet)
1 pinch cinnamon
1 1/2 cup milk
On a low flame, mix all ingredients (except cinnamon,) in a kettle. Stir continuously. The consistency you should be looking for is less than pudding but more than chai latte. Filter in a bowl dust with cinnamon. Serve hot.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 24, 2013
Jim Al Khalili: Science and Islam
Jim Al Khalili is a Baghdad born scientist currently based UK and specialising in nuclear reaction among many other subjects. He was born to a British mother and Iraqi father. As such, he could observe both cultures objectively. Here for a BBC documentary, he talks about the connection of Science and Islam.
Mar 19, 2013
Arabic Alphabets (with English pronunciation)
Here are the basic Arabic alphabets with their pronunciation in English.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 6, 2013
Ramayan in Arabic by Syed Shahid Mahdi
Celebration of Arabic & Indian Literary Cooperation at Jaipur Literature Festival
~ With the launch of the Ramayana in Arabic, two cultures have come closer to one another~
26th January 2013: DSC Jaipur Literature Festival today saw a unique cultural collaboration between two diverse countries. At Asia’s largest literature festivals, vice-president of Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Syed Shahid Mahdi, unveiled the Arabic version of the Ramayana translated by famed Lebanese poet, Wadi-al-Bustani. The book, titled Ramayana,will promote cross-cultural understanding and appreciation of each other’s spiritual heritage.
Syed Shahid Mahdi stressed the importance of cultural cooperation between India and the Arabic world, as he welcomed the delegates from Kalima, the Abu Dhabi translation and publishing initiative. Speaking at the launch, he said that “every culture has a Ramayana”, meaning that every society has its own great works of spiritual illumination and it is a profound act of humanity to share each other’s most powerful stories.
Festival Co-Director Namita Gokhale received the first copy of the book, and stressed the “importance of sharing secular values through the translation of the great epics, which represent both Indian faith and mythic imagination”. Suresh Goel, president, ICCR, was also present at the occasion.
By bring the Ramayana to the world through this initiative, the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival has helped create a bridge between two cultures, with the objective of fostering long-term cultural interaction and mutual understanding.
Jan 20, 2013
10 Facts about Arabic language
1) It is the language of the Holy Koran.
2) Arabic is written from the right to the left.
3) Arabic is written in Naskh script throughout most of the Arabic world with the exception of Malta where it is written in the Latin script (which is the script you are currently reading this article in).
4) Belongs to the Semitic branch of languages, other Semitic language which is closest to Arabic is Hebrew.
5) Arabic is the 11th most spoken language in America.
6) Arabic has lent many words to other languages such as English, Persian, Turkish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Malay and Hausa.
7) Much of Greek literature that was lost during the European conquests have survived because they were translated into Arabic by Arab scholars.
8) Many Arab scholars' names were Latinised during the Renaissance. Some popular names, for instance are, Avicenna who was Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā or Averroes who was ʾAbū l-Walīd Muḥammad bin ʾAḥmad bin Rušd.
9) Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Greek, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, Turkish in medieval times and contemporary European languages in modern times, mostly from English and French.
10) Before Classical Sanskrit literature was widely translated in European languages, it was being exhaustively translated by Arab scholars. Some of the books mentioned in these works are only documented by reference but do not exist in Sanskrit any more.
Jan 18, 2013
Kumpir - Turkish Potato salad Recipe
Recipe from Binnur's Turkish cookbook
Also called Au Gratin Potatoes.
1 baked potato
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp kasar cheese (mozzarella), grated
Salt
Pepper
Sweet corn
Sweet peas, frozen, rinse with hot water, drain
Turkish Black olives, pitted, sliced
Green olives, pitted, sliced
Pickled cucumber, cut in cubes
Pickled beet, cut in cubes
Green onions, sliced
Red cabbage, julienne cut, squeeze with salt, rinse and drain
Carrot, grated
Tomato, cut in cubes
Mushroom, sliced
Fish, in can
White cheesse (Feta), cut in cubes
Preheat the oven to 425ºF (220 C). Pierce the potato with a fork in several places. Place it on oven tray. Bake for 45 - 55 minutes or until tender when pierced with tip of the knife. If you have an Au Gratin Dish, put the baked potato in it. Cut the potato lengthwise in half. Put the butter, cheese, salt and pepper in, mix them with the potato with the knife until it is smooth and creamy (picture). Put some of the ingredients that you liked over the top. Serve as a light lunch or branch.
* Do not use aluminum foil to wrap potatoes to bake, the taste will be steamed texture.
1 baked potato
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp kasar cheese (mozzarella), grated
Salt
Pepper
Sweet corn
Sweet peas, frozen, rinse with hot water, drain
Turkish Black olives, pitted, sliced
Green olives, pitted, sliced
Pickled cucumber, cut in cubes
Pickled beet, cut in cubes
Green onions, sliced
Red cabbage, julienne cut, squeeze with salt, rinse and drain
Carrot, grated
Tomato, cut in cubes
Mushroom, sliced
Fish, in can
White cheesse (Feta), cut in cubes
Preheat the oven to 425ºF (220 C). Pierce the potato with a fork in several places. Place it on oven tray. Bake for 45 - 55 minutes or until tender when pierced with tip of the knife. If you have an Au Gratin Dish, put the baked potato in it. Cut the potato lengthwise in half. Put the butter, cheese, salt and pepper in, mix them with the potato with the knife until it is smooth and creamy (picture). Put some of the ingredients that you liked over the top. Serve as a light lunch or branch.
* Do not use aluminum foil to wrap potatoes to bake, the taste will be steamed texture.
Jan 16, 2013
Mots on Mobikes
There is a Babylonian legend which says, once upon a time, there used to be only one language. Anthropologists and linguists increasingly seem to agree with the idea. Considering the theory that all the continents used to be one and their split and the topographical changes made people migrate from one place to other. Hence, all languages may have had a common source language and migration only created a dialect of that language.
It is interesting to note how far words travel. Of course, people have been wanderers for the longest time. "Settling down to form a culture" is a relatively recent idea. And if people have travelled for trade, expansion, in search of a better land or simply for the joy of travelling, they carried with them their language.
It is interesting to ponder over how some words took root in a foreign land and perhaps may have replaced its colloquial term. For example, the word for pineapple in Marathi, Kannada or Tamil is "ananas". It has origin in the Sanskrit word anaas. But in Arabic, Italian or French the word is a variation of the word ananas, ananasse, ananasso and ananas respectively. Where as there are completly different words for other fruits like apple or guava. (Pineapple is also called "bahunetra phalam" in Sanskrit meaning "the many-eyed fruit.")
Question is why does a particular word travel whereas others don't? Mostly it happens when there is no colloquial equivalent for that term in the loaned-to language. Or sometimes it simply catches on because it is trendy and then becomes localised. We might use only singular foreign terms, especially greetings and interjections which seem to travel faster. For instance even if we might know almost nothing of Italian or Spanish, we still seem to have picked up "ciao" or "hastalavista" when signing off.
In Hindi, there is a peculiar phrase for farewell, "Shabbakhair." People assume it to be Urdu in origin. That might be partially true. It is derived from the Arabic greeting for good morning, "Sabah al Khair,"; which has to be responded with a "Sabah al Noor" which means "the morning be glorious." Urdu being unique in terms of formation, flexibly absorbed the phrase and localised it as "Shabbakhair". (Urdu is written in the Persian script and mixes Hindustani syntactical style for sentence formation. Yet it maintains the Persian style of forming compound terms, eg. jashn-e-bahara meaning celebration of the spring, or duniya-e-husn-o-ishq ka tumhi shabab ho, to paraphrase idea, "you are the essence of the world of beauty of romance," (from the song Chaundvin ka chand) the complexity of the syntax adds to its aesthetics due to the rhythm it renders.)
The academics and scholarly of the Arabic language had long been concerned about the constant sopping up of English words in the Arabic language. Obvious solution was to either coin new words or repurpose old ones. So when the word for "telephone" was being contemplated over, the suggestion that received the approval was interesting. The Arabic word for telephone is "hatif." Hatif is repurposed from the Sufi notion of a worshipper, the dervish responding to the voice of "an invisible caller."
Technology is growing at such a fast rate that such measures may hardly work in the long term. Each new gadget that enters the market brings in a lexicon of its own and is quickly absorbed in most languages of the world. There is limitation on how much contemplation can help this matter because this change is revolutionary. And we cannot be pessimistic about this. Who knows the Age of Technology will perhaps take us back to speaking only one language and to a shape of language we never knew could exist.
It is interesting to note how far words travel. Of course, people have been wanderers for the longest time. "Settling down to form a culture" is a relatively recent idea. And if people have travelled for trade, expansion, in search of a better land or simply for the joy of travelling, they carried with them their language.
It is interesting to ponder over how some words took root in a foreign land and perhaps may have replaced its colloquial term. For example, the word for pineapple in Marathi, Kannada or Tamil is "ananas". It has origin in the Sanskrit word anaas. But in Arabic, Italian or French the word is a variation of the word ananas, ananasse, ananasso and ananas respectively. Where as there are completly different words for other fruits like apple or guava. (Pineapple is also called "bahunetra phalam" in Sanskrit meaning "the many-eyed fruit.")
Question is why does a particular word travel whereas others don't? Mostly it happens when there is no colloquial equivalent for that term in the loaned-to language. Or sometimes it simply catches on because it is trendy and then becomes localised. We might use only singular foreign terms, especially greetings and interjections which seem to travel faster. For instance even if we might know almost nothing of Italian or Spanish, we still seem to have picked up "ciao" or "hastalavista" when signing off.
In Hindi, there is a peculiar phrase for farewell, "Shabbakhair." People assume it to be Urdu in origin. That might be partially true. It is derived from the Arabic greeting for good morning, "Sabah al Khair,"; which has to be responded with a "Sabah al Noor" which means "the morning be glorious." Urdu being unique in terms of formation, flexibly absorbed the phrase and localised it as "Shabbakhair". (Urdu is written in the Persian script and mixes Hindustani syntactical style for sentence formation. Yet it maintains the Persian style of forming compound terms, eg. jashn-e-bahara meaning celebration of the spring, or duniya-e-husn-o-ishq ka tumhi shabab ho, to paraphrase idea, "you are the essence of the world of beauty of romance," (from the song Chaundvin ka chand) the complexity of the syntax adds to its aesthetics due to the rhythm it renders.)
The academics and scholarly of the Arabic language had long been concerned about the constant sopping up of English words in the Arabic language. Obvious solution was to either coin new words or repurpose old ones. So when the word for "telephone" was being contemplated over, the suggestion that received the approval was interesting. The Arabic word for telephone is "hatif." Hatif is repurposed from the Sufi notion of a worshipper, the dervish responding to the voice of "an invisible caller."
Technology is growing at such a fast rate that such measures may hardly work in the long term. Each new gadget that enters the market brings in a lexicon of its own and is quickly absorbed in most languages of the world. There is limitation on how much contemplation can help this matter because this change is revolutionary. And we cannot be pessimistic about this. Who knows the Age of Technology will perhaps take us back to speaking only one language and to a shape of language we never knew could exist.
Jan 14, 2013
10 Interesting Facts about Arabia
1) The numeric system used in English is called Arabic numeral system. The Arabs claim to have learnt it from the Indians. Great Arab scholar Al Kindi's 4 volumes called Ketab fi Isti'mal al-'Adad al-Hindi (Use of the Indian Numeric system,) discusses this in detail.
2) The use of Mathematics and Chemistry was considered esoteric in Europe. Algebra was considered a fad, and the word "gibberish" may have been a play on the word Algebra.
3) There was a burst of scientific and cultural activities in the Arab world from the 9th Century to 11th Century which in turn is said to have triggered the Western Renaissance.
4) English words such as Algebra, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, were loaned to the language through Arabic scientists. In fact, the word algorithm is a contribution to the Arab mathematician, Al Khwarizmi, his latinised name was Algoritmi. Any famous scientists of Arab origins right now? Here you go!
5) Ibn Battuta from Morocco was the most travelled explorer in the world. In the 14th century he had covered 75,000 miles or more than one lakh kilometres, covering most of the then-known world. He travelled three-folds more than his Western counterpart Marco Polo. For an individual, such amount of travel was effortlessly possible only five centuries later after the invention of steam engines.
6) There were many Arabic scholars who were masters of the classical Sanskrit language. They translated many scholarly work from Sanskrit to Arabic.
7) Many Indian languages such as Marathi, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali have many Arabic words
8) The first recorded usage of the word "Arab" as applied to an ethnicity could be traced back to 9th Century BC or approximately 2900 years ago.
9) One of the greatest Western mathematician, Fibonacci was tutored by Arab mathematicians.
10) Not all Arabs are Muslims, just like all Muslims are not Arabs or just like all Indians are not Hindus. Arab is an ethnicity, with a population of Christianity, Judaism and other such faiths as well.
2) The use of Mathematics and Chemistry was considered esoteric in Europe. Algebra was considered a fad, and the word "gibberish" may have been a play on the word Algebra.
3) There was a burst of scientific and cultural activities in the Arab world from the 9th Century to 11th Century which in turn is said to have triggered the Western Renaissance.
4) English words such as Algebra, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, were loaned to the language through Arabic scientists. In fact, the word algorithm is a contribution to the Arab mathematician, Al Khwarizmi, his latinised name was Algoritmi. Any famous scientists of Arab origins right now? Here you go!
5) Ibn Battuta from Morocco was the most travelled explorer in the world. In the 14th century he had covered 75,000 miles or more than one lakh kilometres, covering most of the then-known world. He travelled three-folds more than his Western counterpart Marco Polo. For an individual, such amount of travel was effortlessly possible only five centuries later after the invention of steam engines.
6) There were many Arabic scholars who were masters of the classical Sanskrit language. They translated many scholarly work from Sanskrit to Arabic.
7) Many Indian languages such as Marathi, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali have many Arabic words
8) The first recorded usage of the word "Arab" as applied to an ethnicity could be traced back to 9th Century BC or approximately 2900 years ago.
9) One of the greatest Western mathematician, Fibonacci was tutored by Arab mathematicians.
10) Not all Arabs are Muslims, just like all Muslims are not Arabs or just like all Indians are not Hindus. Arab is an ethnicity, with a population of Christianity, Judaism and other such faiths as well.
Jan 13, 2013
Hummus Recipe and Video
Hummus is a Middle Eastern dip. Healthy, tasty and most importantly very easy to make. Can be eaten with the traditional kuboos or even chapatis. It is made from chick peas or kabooli chana which is known to be a good source of protein. Also it is vegetarian and so easy to whip up!
Here's a video from dedemed on youtube.com
Here's the recipe
Here's a video from dedemed on youtube.com
Here's the recipe
Directions
- Pour garbanzo beans and chopped garlic into the blender. Place lemon juice, tahini, chopped garlic and salt in blender. Blend until creamy and well mixed.
- Transfer the mixture to a medium serving bowl. Sprinkle with pepper and pour olive oil over the top. Garnish with reserved garbanzo beans.
- PREP 15 mins
- READY IN 15 mins
Jan 12, 2013
Why The Blog
What can I say about the land of minarets and golden sands?
Perhaps I can tell you a few new things, perhaps the same story with a new perspective...
I don't know what it would be as yet, but stay tuned because I sure have a few things bubbling in my mind.
Perhaps I can tell you a few new things, perhaps the same story with a new perspective...
I don't know what it would be as yet, but stay tuned because I sure have a few things bubbling in my mind.
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